BICHARD INQUIRY REPORT

Resolved,
	That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, That she will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House a Return of the Report on child protection procedures in Humberside Police and Cambridgeshire Constabulary, particularly the effectiveness of relevant intelligence-based record keeping, vetting practices since 1995 and information sharing with other agencies.—[Ms Blears.]

Oral Answers to Questions

TRANSPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Translink Busway (Dunstable/Luton)

Andrew Selous: If he will make a statement on the Translink guided busway proposed between Dunstable and Luton.

Tony McNulty: Translink was given provisional approval for funding of up to £78.39 million in the 2004–05 local transport settlement, subject to statutory powers and planning approval being obtained. The scheme is now the subject of an application to the Secretary of State for approval under the Transport and Works Act 1992. It would not be appropriate therefore for me to comment on its merits, as doing so could prejudice our consideration of the application.

Andrew Selous: Yet again, the wishes of the people of south Bedfordshire, as expressed in every survey of public opinion undertaken, and the wishes of all their county and district councillors, irrespective of party, are being ignored. They resent having an unwanted, expensive and bad value for money scheme imposed on them. Will the Minister please, even at this late stage, agree to put on hold the plans for Translink until a full and proper evaluation is undertaken into an alternative light rail scheme with feeder bus services, which would save the Government about £70 million and win them the undying affection of the people of south Bedfordshire?

Tony McNulty: The hon. Gentleman will know that I am not able to put a hold on a process that has started to unfold under the Transport and Works Act 1992, but I can assure him that heavy rail and light rail alternatives to Translink were thoroughly assessed by the Department. Patronage for such projects was shown to be insufficient, and the alternatives did not offer value for money, despite some of the projects included. If he is serious about heavy rail or light rail alternatives, he might have a word with his right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) and explain to him what public expenditure means.

Kelvin Hopkins: My constituency could be served by Translink, but, unfortunately, only really effectively if it is a guided busway because bus services offer flexibility. However, does my hon. Friend not agree that the whole scheme could be expanded to cover much longer distances and a much wider area, especially when housing between Luton and Milton Keynes is developed in future years? Will he continue his strong support for the Translink busway scheme, which we strongly support in Luton?

Tony McNulty: I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. All I can say at this stage is that we will wait and see how the process under the Transport and Works Act develops for the Translink project, but I am sure that the Department will entertain any subsequent well-founded applications and treat them in the appropriate manner.

Travel Facilities (Disabled Access)

Peter Pike: What steps his Department is taking to ensure that better facilities for the disabled are provided on the (a) rail network and (b) underground systems.

Tony McNulty: Since 1999, we have required all new trains to be fully accessible. We have worked with industry and issued guidance on improving access to stations, as part of the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. In addition, London Underground has a key network strategy to make more of its key stations accessible.

Peter Pike: My hon. Friend will know that very few stations on the new underground map are marked as having disabled access. He will also know that travelling on the underground is a nightmare for many people who have disabilities. Even if they know that they can go to a station where they can get to the platform, they do not necessarily know whether the train will be at the right level to get on. Very often, they do not know what will await them at the other end of their journey. That is not acceptable for disabled people in 2004. When will the Government do more to ensure that we really meet the requirements of disabled people?

Tony McNulty: I take the point that my hon. Friend makes. He will know that 40 underground stations are currently accessible without stairs or escalators. Given the peculiar difficulties associated with the age and infrastructure of much of London's underground, Transport for London has developed a key network strategy to make about 100 stations accessible to disabled people. Stations outside that key network will be connected to it by fully accessible bus services. That is all fine and proper, but greater awareness and publicity is still needed when that network is in place to allow people to know not just where they can start their journeys, but where they can finish them with the same accessibility, as my hon. Friend suggests.

Archie Norman: The Minister may know that the Minister of State wrote to me on exactly this issue last month. I am grateful to him for his letter, which was constructive. Does the Minister agree that the Department's current position is that there will be some money, sometime—we do not know how much and we do not know when—to make railway stations disabled friendly? Will he give the House some idea whether there is any target for improving railway stations in that respect in the next few years and, if so, when that is likely to be delivered? What is the earliest possible date on which a very busy station, such as Tunbridge Wells in my constituency, can be made disabled friendly?

Tony McNulty: I shall look into the specifics of Tunbridge Wells in more detail and get back to the hon. Gentleman. He will know, perhaps far more than others given his background in finance, that I am unlikely to make any commitment on a specific budget line for the overall rail budget when we are some weeks away from the spending review. However, I will write to him in the fullness of time specifically about disability access to stations.

David Taylor: Discussion about accessibility for people with disabilities is too often restricted to those with the more obvious disabilities that require wheelchair usage. Is the Minister content with the progress made in recent years on enabling those with hearing or sight difficulties to use station services more effectively? Does he agree that progress could be made on that as well?

Tony McNulty: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. Accessibility is not simply about wheelchair access, although we do need greater progress in that regard. There have been significant improvements throughout the rail network and the bus and tube network in London and elsewhere on the availability of real-time passenger information and the greater availability of assorted tactile, oral and other forms of information for those passengers with a degree of disability that is, perhaps, more hidden than other disabilities. The point that the issue is not simply about wheelchair use is strong and I take it on board.

Martin Smyth: Can the Minister tell us how many mainline stations have tactile facilities to allow those who are blind to purchase tickets? Such facilities have been in operation in stations in the far east for years. Surely, as we are modernising, we should be dealing with that. Does he also agree that there is a tendency to forget that people with disabilities have a right to move about freely?

Tony McNulty: I certainly accept the second point. The   whole purpose of accessibility, in its broadest dimension, in line with what my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) said, is about people's right to move around as freely as possible. I do not know the formal answer to how many mainline stations have that tactile dimension to ticket purchasing, but in researching further the wonder that is Tunbridge Wells station and disabled access to it, I shall also write to the hon. Gentleman in that regard, with a specific answer.

Blackpool Tramway

Michael Jack: What investment his Department will be making in the refurbishment of Blackpool tramway.

Kim Howells: As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will understand, there are many pressures on the transport programme and there are several major light rail schemes currently under consideration. We will announce a decision on Blackpool as soon as we can.

Michael Jack: I thank the Minister for his reply. Will he confirm that all the Members of Parliament who represent the Fylde coast and who have an interest are in the Chamber? Will he also confirm that sustaining an existing transport system, like the Blackpool tramway, is compatible with Government policy? Does he recognise the importance of the project to the regeneration of Blackpool and the effect that it will have on the Fylde coast? This project, as it exists, should not be the subject of a determination using an optimism index. The system works and needs to be sustained. Can we have the Minister's support?

Kim Howells: The right hon. Gentleman is well known for his optimism. I pay tribute to him and to my hon. Friends who have campaigned for the project for a long time. I must remind him, however, that a great deal of investment has gone into light rail. Indeed, the number of passengers carried on light rail has increased by 86 per cent. since 1996–97. We will certainly consider all the light rail schemes that have been proposed, including Blackpool. I hope that we can make an announcement on Blackpool in the short term rather than the long term.

Gordon Marsden: My hon. Friend will be well aware from his previous incarnation in the tourism game that the Blackpool tram system is very well used and patronised, not just by tourists, but also by residents. Picking up the point made by the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), will my hon. Friend convey to his officials and those charged with making a final deliberation that, whether or not an optimism index is reasonable, it is not necessarily reasonable to apply the same optimism index to a blue-sky scheme as it is to one that is tried and tested, which has no nasty surprises in terms of rerouting utilities and things of that nature?

Kim Howells: I can assure my hon. Friend that we are well aware of the nature of the scheme. It is long established. We know its strengths and limitations. I shall certainly pass on his observations to officials in my Department.

Joan Humble: To reinforce the point again about the importance of the Blackpool tramway, is my hon. Friend aware that it goes through Cleveleys all the way up to Fleetwood and is an existing service, used not just by tourists, but by local residents? My constituents in Fleetwood use the tramway to travel down into Blackpool to work and to get back home again. Equally, tourists in Blackpool use it to go up to Fleetwood to enjoy the facilities there. It is vital that the investment is put in to ensure that the tramway, which has been in existence for 100 years, continues for another 100 years.

Kim Howells: I commend my hon. Friend on the case that she has made for the Blackpool tramway and on reminding the House that it is a working tramway that carries people to and from work in the centre of Blackpool. I can only repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden)—we are well aware of the importance of the scheme, but we must consider it in the context of a number of other proposed schemes, all of which are regarded as important to their neighbourhoods.

British Transport Police

Vincent Cable: If he will make a statement on the funding arrangements for the British Transport police.

Alistair Darling: The British Transport police are funded primarily by the rail industry, and this year its budget of £162 million includes funding for 100 extra officers on the London underground.

Vincent Cable: Is it not fundamentally unsound that a key part of the British police service that not only enforces law and order on trains and at stations but conducts sophisticated anti-terrorist operations on the underground and at mainline stations should be dependent on grudging and capricious contributions from the private rail companies? Can the Minister not insist that those companies fund the British Transport police at the same level as the rest of the police force?

Alistair Darling: I do not think that it is wrong that the railway industry funds the British Transport police. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, as the Government fund quite a lot of the railway, public money is going to the transport police one way or another. We have just set up a new police authority that will have the job of looking at the budget needed by the British Transport police, especially in light of the report by Her Majesty's inspectorate to be published tomorrow. It shows that certain aspects of the force need to be looked at, and it has the power to get money from the industry to the police. However, the budget has been increased by about £25 million, and the Government have funded £2 million-worth of expenditure on the anti-terrorism measures mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. Money is therefore going into the force, and force numbers have been increased.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: The Secretary of State will nevertheless be aware that the increase in force numbers was needed because on the London underground and the overground trains British Transport police are being called on to do more to contribute to security. Will he insist that the new police authority tells the train companies that they must pay up and look cheerful, as they need those dedicated forces and had better get on and find the cash?

Alistair Darling: I agree with much of what my hon. Friend said.

Bob Russell: Smile then.

Alistair Darling: How can one smile when talking about railway finances? Believe me, it is simply not possible. Every day, I go to the office and see a black cloud hanging above my desk, but I shall try to be cheerful. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), however, is absolutely right—the British Transport police do a first-class job, and we are asking them to do more. In the current climate, we are likely to ask them to increase the amount of activity that they undertake, which is why it is important that the organisation is properly equipped and funded. I believe that that can and will be done, and we are looking at it in the context of the railway review.

Christopher Chope: Is the problem not whether the Secretary of State is cheerful but that he is complacent? There is more violent crime, fewer detections and, notwithstanding his remarks about increased numbers of transport police on the underground, there will be a reduction of 150 transport police on the overground as a result of the £40 million deficit in the British Transport police pension fund, which only last year Ministers assured us was in surplus. The running costs for the new police authority are six times higher than forecast, so why do the Government not apologise for that manifest failure?

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman is wrong about police numbers—they will not be reduced. As for crime, yes, it has increased in some respects, but on the other hand theft on the London underground and criminal damage to railway carriages has been reduced. Detection rates for robbery have gone up. I am certainly not going to say to the House that there are not still problems and more that needs to be done, but the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong to claim that police numbers are to decrease. They are not. They will remain exactly as they are at present. As I said earlier, there will be 100 extra officers for the London underground.

Rail Freight Interchange Facilities

Jim Dobbin: What plans he has to increase the number of rail freight interchange facilities.

Kim Howells: The provision of rail freight interchanges is primarily a matter for the private sector rail freight industry and commercial property developers. The Strategic Rail Authority published its strategic rail freight interchange policy in March this year. The document aims to facilitate the development of a network of commercially viable rail freight interchanges by providing guidance for planning authorities and developers.

Jim Dobbin: My constituency lies midway between the M1 and the M6 and the ports of Hull and Liverpool. A huge industrial development is to take place at junction 21, called the Kingsway industrial development. A tremendous number of heavy goods vehicles run through and around that part of the north-west. Will my hon. Friend take into consideration the points that I have raised and give some guidance to the private sector developers who are developing freight terminals, when the Government come to designate and plan for the future?

Kim Howells: I am prepared to talk to anyone who is interested in such developments, because the country needs them. I remind my hon. Friend that the railway is privatised and those developments are driven by the market, as they should be. I am sure that he has made a compelling case to the developers for the kind of facility that he mentions. We are keen to get as much freight as possible off the road and on to the railways.

John Thurso: The Minister is aware that on average, 80 per cent. less carbon dioxide is emitted by one tonne of freight that travels by rail, rather than by road. Is he also aware that the logistics industry believes that rail freight should be a viable economic alternative to road haulage, but that will depend on the development of rail freight interchanges or rail freight villages? Given that such developments are both environmentally and economically desirable, what can the Government do to help the planning process, particularly in view of the failure of that for the west London freight village?

Kim Howells: My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has been conducting a major review of planning law and practice. In conjunction with the Strategic Rail Authority we are looking hard at how it might be possible to push projects forward. The hon. Gentleman knows that many considerations have to be taken into account. Those often entail environmentally sensitive areas, the prospect of noise for local residents and so on. That is always difficult: everyone is in favour of moving freight on to the railways for environmental reasons, but no one wants freight terminals at the bottom of their garden.

Bill O'Brien: My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) referred to the east and west ports, Hull and Liverpool. One of the problems is the lack of a high-speed rail link between the east and the west. We have the links between north and south. Has my hon. Friend the Minister given any thought to the possibility of developing a high-speed rail link from the east ports to the west ports, which would be of tremendous value to those moving freight across from the west coast to the east coast and into Europe?

Kim Howells: We are very much aware of the issue, but the huge sums that are currently being spent to upgrade the west coast main line will enormously increase the capacity for freight trains on that line. Also, we are doing a great deal of work to link the north–west via the west coast main line from the eastern ports, such as Felixstowe, which are major container ports. We will bring that traffic down, including 9 ft 6 in high boxes, which are essential, via the north London line, across on to the west coast main line and up to the north-west. There is a great deal of work going on, as we are anxious to achieve that. We are keen to see much faster transit of freight by rail from the east coast to the west coast.

John Taylor: Is the Minister aware of a project recently considered in Solihull to link the Land Rover plant to the west coast main line? Surely, that would be compatible with the Government's policy of road on to rail. Would he care to give an indication that, if the Ford Motor Company were to revive that plan to connect the Land Rover plant to the west coast main line, the Government would approve and indicate their approval?

Kim Howells: I have not seen any sign of that project yet, but we will certainly take a look at it. Of course, when Ford built its Bridgend plant many years ago, it paid part of the costs of rail connection on to the great western main line, which has proved very successful in moving products out of that plant. We would certainly be interested in the project, and we are very interested in what part the private sector can play in helping to fund such projects.

Railway Costs

Patsy Calton: What steps are being taken to reduce costs within the railway industry.

Alistair Darling: We return to the cheery subject of railway costs.
	As a result of the regulator's review, Network Rail is required to achieve efficiency gains of 31 per cent. over five years. The SRA is also working to reduce costs during the franchising process.

Patsy Calton: I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. He will know that considerable costs have been incurred in the somewhat failed TCS or train control system on the west coast main line. Can he tell me whether the masts erected for the TCS system on the west coast main line are operational now for the purposes that we were led to believe they would fulfil? If they are not operational, when will they be?

Alistair Darling: The answer is that the masts are being tested at the moment. I shall certainly let the hon. Lady know when they come into operation.

Lawrie Quinn: Given the immense costs associated with infrastructure investment on the railway and the skill shortages across the industry, can the Secretary of State tell us what recent discussions his Department has had with Network Rail in trying to fill those voids of skill shortages in terms of engineers and the people who will be involved in rebuilding the railway?

Alistair Darling: We have had discussions with Network Rail about that issue. It is one of the reasons why costs have gone up. After many years of under-investment, considerable sums are now being spent not only on the west coast main line, but on upgrading the power supply for trains south of the River Thames. A whole lot of other work is also being carried out, which has an effect on labour costs. Network Rail is looking to see what it can do to improve the situation. Taking maintenance back in house has saved a substantial sum. Indeed, Network Rail is spending a lot less than it thought it would have to spend to get the same amount of work, simply because of the efficiency that it is driving through, having taken over from Railtrack what was a pretty shambolic situation.

John Redwood: Is anybody currently reviewing the optimal size of the network and thinking about closures of any portions of it? If so, will those involved consider conversion to busways or dedicated freight lorryways, rather than wasting those routes?

Alistair Darling: When I announced the review, I said that one of the things that we should be doing as a matter of course was keeping under review the new markets that were emerging for the railway, as well as the railway services that were not being so well used. The House will recall that, in January last year, when the SRA announced the removal of about 180 Virgin Cross Country services, many people were concerned. In fact, many of those services were not carrying many passengers. As a result of having taken them out, the reliability of Virgin Cross Country in respect of the remaining trains has improved, because the lines are less congested.
	I have also said that passenger transport executives in particular need to ask themselves whether heavy rail is the right option and whether light rail or buses might be better. The cost of running heavy rail, especially if it is not carrying significant numbers of passengers, is substantial. The point that the right hon. Gentleman makes is one that I have dealt with previously. Provided that these matters are looked at sensibly, we might get a better deal for the travelling public in some areas.

Clive Betts: I am sure that my right hon. Friend accepts that private investment is one way to reduce costs in the rail industry. Some of us were looking forward to the Central Railway project, which would have provided significant economic benefits to the north of England, not least to Tinsley in my constituency, where a major rail freight terminal was planned. Members of Parliament and local authorities in Manchester, Yorkshire and the east midlands support the scheme, and the company says that it cannot envisage a situation in which the project would require public funds. Will my right hon. Friend consider whether the project can go ahead, bearing in mind that the Government say that they cannot support the proposed private Bill?

Alistair Darling: Unfortunately, I cannot see a way forward for that project, which is a point that my hon. Friend the Minister of State made clear earlier in the year. I favour bringing private money into the railways—the Government spend about £77 million a week on the railways, and a similar amount comes in from the private sector—but I was not satisfied that sufficient private money was available to pay for the Central Railway project. I feared that, when the project was half built, the promoters would come to us and say, "We are awfully sorry, can you take it over?" On a number of occasions, I asked the promoters to guarantee that that would not happen, and they could not do so, which is why the Government made it clear that they could not make such a substantial commitment. I am keen to obtain private sector money, but if such private sector projects are to go ahead, we must be sure that they can be delivered.

Tim Yeo: In a spirit of helpfulness, which is appropriate at this early stage of my relationship with the Secretary of State, I shall suggest how to dispel the black cloud that hangs in his office on the issue of railway finance. Will he confirm that the dual regulatory system imposed by the Labour Government has substantially increased the costs carried by the rail industry? Does he agree that the burden that those costs place on passengers and taxpayers could be cut at once if the Government admitted their mistakes and rationalised the operations of the Strategic Rail Authority and the Office of the Rail Regulator?

Alistair Darling: I am pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman wants to have a close and cordial relationship. In that spirit, I point out to him that on 19 January this year, I announced a review of the railway industry, and that review is examining the structures that he complains about. The SRA does not add greatly to the cost of the railways, but the structure set up under privatisation, which includes numerous interfaces between private companies, is undoubtedly costly. We set up the review to control costs and to obtain a better organisation to run the railways. If the hon. Gentleman and I can agree on that point, our relationship will be fruitful, cordial and perhaps even lasting—I look forward to seeing him on the Opposition Front Bench for many years to come.

Speed Cameras

David Rendel: What plans he has to change the number of speed cameras.

Bob Russell: How many speed safety cameras have been removed in the past month because they did not comply with the siting criteria.

David Jamieson: Decisions about increasing or decreasing the numbers of speed safety cameras are made locally by the safety camera partnerships, taking account of the handbook of rules and guidelines issued by my Department. At the beginning of the year, safety camera partnerships confirmed that all their camera sites fully met the deployment criteria. However, approximately 5 per cent. of cameras, although meeting the criteria for placement, may not reduce accidents, and we have asked local authorities and the police to examine other measures to reduce casualties.

David Rendel: The Department for Transport's recent survey into speed camera sites shows welcome reductions in speeding and in the number of people who are killed and injured, including a 43 per cent. reduction in the Thames valley area. Will the Minister accept that he should brave the wrath of the selfish 20 per cent. of drivers who think it more important to avoid fines than to keep people safe on the roads? Will he examine those roads where there are still useful prospects for speed cameras, including, for example, the B4009 in my constituency, where the two fatal accidents in the past two years might well have been avoided if a speed camera had been in use?

David Jamieson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments on speed cameras, the presence of which has meant a substantial reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured. One would hope to hear whether the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) has changed his view on the policy. I am sure that he will catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, if he can.
	The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) makes an important point. Authorities of all political perspectives, including Tory authorities, have contacted the Department to ask us to relax our rules because they want the cameras put in other places. It is important, however, that such decisions are made locally by local authorities and local police—they understand the local issues best.

Bob Russell: Following the 95 per cent. success rate to which the Under-Secretary referred, I draw his attention to a true story that was published in the Colchester Evening Gazette last week, which stated:
	"The number of people killed or seriously injured at sites where safety cameras are in use in north Essex has dramatically fallen."
	I want to refer specifically to one of the 17 sites in my constituency. In the three years before safety cameras were installed in Cowdray avenue, there were five serious—some fatal—crashes. In the two subsequent years, there have been none. In the light of that, has the hon. Gentleman received any messages of apology or retraction from politicians who are apparently prepared to envisage death and injury continuing on our roads?

David Jamieson: I have yet to hear from the hon. Member for Ashford in the House or after the correspondence on 29 January, when I wrote to him to ask whether he could tell us the location of the 4,000 sites at which cameras had been installed unnecessarily. When we opened the post this morning, there was still no response.
	I acknowledge that there has been a substantial reduction in casualties in the area that the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) represents. We all know about the misery that death causes but should reflect on the misery caused by serious injuries that include lacerations, crushed or broken limbs, brain injury and sometimes permanent paralysis. I am sure that the new shadow Secretary of State wants to revoke any policy to remove the cameras that are successfully driving down casualties.

Jeff Ennis: I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary knows that the press sometimes reports examples of speed cameras being vandalised, presumably by irate drivers. Are there statistics for the number of cameras that have been vandalised in the past couple of years? What is the Department doing to ensure that such vandalism is kept to a minimum?

David Jamieson: Those who vandalise cameras put people's lives at risk. They must answer a question: if a camera is vandalised and out of operation for a period of time, how many people have consequently been killed or injured? I have not got to hand the figures for the number of cameras that have been vandalised but it has happened to only a few and a minority of people are responsible. I hope that Conservative Members would not support such people—a minority who are determined to continue speeding and put people's lives at risk. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of motorists would reject that idea and such action.

Jim Sheridan: On the assumption that speed cameras are designed to save lives in all our communities, is my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary aware of the perception that there is a far higher proportion of drivers who speed in more affluent than in less affluent areas? Will he assure hon. Members that the cameras are located for genuine reasons, not by postcode?

David Jamieson: The decisions about where to place the cameras are made locally by local authorities and the police. In the past three years, child casualties have fallen rapidly. In particular, the casualty rate among child pedestrians, who are mainly in the built-up areas of our cities, has fallen by approximately 33 per cent. That must be welcome and is another statistic on which Conservative Members should reflect. I hope that the hon. Member for Ashford will be successful in catching your eye so that he can tell us his current policy on the matter.

Nicholas Winterton: Although there is clearly an important role for speed cameras, which anyone of sense and reason would accept, does the Under-Secretary agree that the general public must be persuaded that the siting of the cameras is appropriate? Does he accept that some limitation might be placed on the power of cars that are available to young people to prevent over-powered cars from being in the hands of young, irresponsible drivers?

David Jamieson: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that his own Front-Bench colleagues have not shown sense and reason on this matter, but I shall leave the House to reflect on that. It is important that the cameras are placed where there have been high numbers of casualties. The Department set out those rules very clearly, and the response from the partnerships throughout the country was that the sites met those criteria. In all those areas, the vast majority of cameras are now reducing the number of deaths and injuries on the road.
	We have looked at the type of vehicles driven by younger drivers. Unfortunately, even some of the smaller vehicles are very high-powered and are certainly able to go at well above 30 mph; some can do well above 100 mph. The issue here is proper training for drivers, and proper enforcement of the law.

Kevin Brennan: Did my hon. Friend see the recent case of the pensioner who was prosecuted for taking his hands off the steering wheel to make a gesture at a speed camera? May I encourage my hon. Friend to make exactly the same gesture at all those who call on him to reduce the number of speed cameras, and who put the rights of people who break the law before the saving of lives?

David Jamieson: As I understand the case, the person who was prosecuted had both hands off the steering wheel, which I would not commend to anyone. In the light of the independent report on safety cameras, I look forward to hearing from the hon. Member for Ashford on this issue. After six months of asking him to withdraw his allegation about the 4,000 cameras, I hope that he will now take back what he said then and put safety ahead of opportunism.

Damian Green: I am delighted that, this morning, on his own admission, the Minister has withdrawn the absurd claim that he made when he wrote to me in January, that 100 per cent. of the cameras were in the right place. Even he has now admitted that only 95 per cent. are in the right place. He is, however, missing a serious point made in the report that the Government produced last week, which is that there are 384 camera sites at which the number of serious or fatal accidents has increased since the camera went in. If the Minister wants to take the credit for a reduction in accidents at the places where that has happened, he must also take responsibility for the increase in accidents at those 384 sites. Has he told the camera partnerships to take down the cameras that are making our roads more dangerous, and if not, why not?

David Jamieson: The hon. Gentleman is now wriggling. What I asserted back in January was that we had been told by the partnerships—many of which are led by Conservative authorities—that all the cameras were in places that met the Department's criteria. The independent report that we commissioned and published has shown that about 5 per cent. of the cameras—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman would be quiet for a moment, he would be able to hear what I am saying. The report has shown that, although the cameras are in the right place and meet the criteria, 5 per cent. of them are not having the effect that we want them to achieve. But does that not mean that 95 per cent. of them are having the effect that we want? The hon. Gentleman should now go back and reconsider his policy of taking cameras away because they are ineffective. It seems that the only person on whom that policy has been imposed is the former shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May).

Kent Rail Franchise

Jonathan R Shaw: What assessment he has made of the Strategic Rail Authority's proposed Integrated Kent Rail Franchise.

Kim Howells: The Strategic Rail Authority's consultation on service patterns for the Integrated Kent Rail Franchise ended on 23 April. It is assessing responses before finalising the specification of services.

Jonathan R Shaw: Is my hon. Friend aware that the last time that the Kent rail timetable was reviewed was in 1963? What concerns me is that that coincides with another event of 1963, namely the great train robbery. We in Medway are concerned that the SRA will propose a reduction in commuter services. While we welcome the channel tunnel rail link domestic services stopping in the Medway towns, we have always argued that this should involve additional rail services, particularly given the 5 per cent. growth in the Thames gateway area. Will the Minister confirm that we need additional rail services rather than a reduction in peak commuter services into London, given the predicted growth?

Kim Howells: May I remind my hon. Friend that railways in this country are not a free good? They cost a lot of money. We have built the first new railway for a hundred years, through Kent, which will benefit enormously the people of Kent, as it will benefit the rest of the country. His question about those services being entirely additional to those already existing raises a number of issues. Some of the domestic services will have to have pathways cleared in the existing timetable if they are to run and if people are to get into the centre of London more quickly—

Eric Forth: Is that a no?

Kim Howells: I hear the call from the Tories that they do not want any of this. That is fine. If they are reflecting what their constituents feel, and they do not want channel tunnel rail link domestic services into the centre of London, they should be honest enough to come out and say so. We will try to make sure that there is the maximum capacity in terms of passengers being able to access central London, both on the existing network and on the new network.

Hugh Robertson: Under the Strategic Rail Authority's proposals, villages such as Hollingbourne, Harrietsham and Lenham in my constituency stand to lose all their rail services in the middle of the day and at weekends. Given that those are exactly the same villages that were decimated by the channel tunnel rail link workings in the mid-1990s, will the Minister undertake today to honour the commitments given at that time to ensure that rail services are improved?

Kim Howells: I understand that the SRA has had 4,200 responses to its consultation. It is going through those responses, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman responded on behalf of his constituents. I assume that he would agree that the proper way forward is for the SRA to make the judgment as to how best to ensure that existing capacity is maintained and improved wherever possible, and that people can get from Kent into London more quickly. Those people's jobs depend on it, and many of the services provided in the economy of London depend on people from Kent being able to get easily into London.

Michael Jabez Foster: Does my hon. Friend agree that the high-speed link is for the benefit of the whole country? In that case, should it not be top-sliced in respect of its cost, so that the SRA does not take that into account in determining what moneys are available to support the franchise?

Kim Howells: I am not quite sure what system of payment my hon. Friend is proposing. All I know is that it must still be paid for, and that in the end, the Government pay for it.

Damian Green: The Minister will be aware that the overwhelming majority of those 4,000 responses to the Strategic Rail Authority were hostile—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) seems to get in an awful state when he is not called. I must tell him that those on the Front Bench put in a request, and it is not my fault when that happens. When he does not get called, he should take it in good spirit. That is important.

Damian Green: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that I will also represent the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), who, I understand, feels strongly about this issue. The Minister will know, as he has referred to the 4,000 responses, that the overwhelming hostility to the SRA's proposals for the Kent franchise, which he also hears from his Back Benchers, is precisely because the SRA proposes cutting services to many smaller stations around Kent. Can he assure the House that we will not see a perverse effect from the billions of pounds that he has said have been invested in the channel tunnel rail link? As things stand, overall rail services in Kent will get worse. It seems a colossal waste of taxpayers' money to invest money in a new railway, and to have, as a direct result, worse rail services.

Kim Howells: I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle because I am sure that he could have put that question a bit better, as we have had this question time and again. I say to the Front-Bench spokesman that the industry is privatised, and that his party privatised it. The days of the Government being able to intervene on the railways, in the way that he describes, are long gone, and he knows that full well. What he is doing is making a cheap political point, and his constituents will understand it.

Bus Quality Contract Scheme

Colin Challen: When he intends to publish the results of the consultation on reducing the 21-month minimum waiting period for implementing a bus quality contract scheme.

Alistair Darling: We are considering the responses to the consultation, and we will be announcing its outcome shortly.

Colin Challen: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, because anything that brings closer the day when we have better bus services will be very welcome. Is he aware that I often receive complaints from my constituents, in unparliamentary language, about the quality of some of our local bus services, particularly in my local villages? Recently, one bus service was removed to improve the service to another village—robbing Peter to pay Paul. We need to investigate how to improve bus services. Will my right hon. Friend be willing to meet me when I have completed my local bus transport survey, to discuss its results?

Alistair Darling: My hon. Friend and other Members on both sides will agree that bus services are working quite well in some areas, where we have seen an increase in patronage and the services are satisfactory. In other areas, however, there have been difficulties. As I have said before, we are looking at those matters and will come forward with proposals in due course. I am firmly of the view that we should try to build on what works, then make adjustments to deal with aspects that do not work, rather than go back to the drawing board.

CABINET OFFICE

The Minister was asked—

Internet

Anthony D Wright: How people who cannot use the internet will be able to   benefit from the Directgov approach to service delivery.

Douglas Alexander: Directgov, which was launched earlier this year, is available not just on the internet but to 7 million homes with interactive TV. Cabinet Office officials are looking at other channels, such as mobile telephones, to make sure that Directgov is available to as many people as possible.
	For those who do not have the skills or ready access to these technologies at home or at work, the Government have established 6,000 UK Online centres, which offer free or low-cost access and deliver online learning to help and encourage people to enjoy the benefits of information and communications technology.

Anthony D Wright: I thank the Minister for that response. I have visited the Directgov site and found it extremely useful, and I imagine that many of my constituents will find it useful. The many online centres in my constituency, including at Greenacre school, Breydon middle school and Great Yarmouth high school, have worked extremely well for the community. However, there are still many people, such as the elderly and disabled, who cannot access those online centres and find it difficult to fund digital television or personal computers. What assistance can my hon. Friend offer to my constituents in Great Yarmouth who cannot access those centres but would find it extremely useful to go online to the Directgov site?

Douglas Alexander: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, which raises several important issues. He is right to identify that there are a number of UK Online centres in his constituency—nine in Great Yarmouth and a further 13 within a 15-mile radius. The challenge of getting the United Kingdom online is one that the Government have embraced, although there are some specific barriers, which my hon. Friend identifies. Income continues to affect internet access: 12 per cent. of the lowest income groups have home internet access compared with 86 per cent. of the highest income groups. That is why the Government continue to pursue their anti-poverty strategy. The age gap is also considerable in terms of those who use online services. It is more difficult to get older people to use UK Online centres, so last year we ran the "Get Started" campaign, which specifically targeted the elderly community, among other groups, to make sure that we gave every advice and assistance to people who wanted to become silver surfers. I shall be happy to write to my hon. Friend to set out the strategy that the Government are adopting in relation to his constituency.

Richard Allan: I congratulate the Government on the clear interface of the new Directgov website, which serves to highlight the inadequacy and complexity of many of the other Government websites to which it leads. Will the new head of e-Government who has recently been appointed have the authority to insist that other Departments use improved web standards to make them as clear as the Directgov site?

Douglas Alexander: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that typically charitable question. We of course take great pride in the Directgov site, which is a significant improvement on its predecessor, UK Online. We are receiving extremely positive customer feedback about the site. On the substantive point that the hon. Gentleman raises, when Ian Watmore takes up his new position in the Cabinet Office in September, one of his tasks will be to work effectively with other people in a range of Departments to ensure that our offering has consistently high standards. We believe that he will take to that task with relish, which is consistent with the whole drive towards e-Government that we have advanced during this Parliament.

Michael Jabez Foster: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most effective ways of Government interfacing with the public is through services provided by post offices? Does he also agree that we should do everything possible to maintain a comprehensive post office network through which we can have a real interface between the Government, IT services and the public?

Douglas Alexander: My hon. Friend has asked an important question about the future of post offices and I will happily communicate his point to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. I would say, however, that if we reflect on the capacity for post offices to use banking services and, in particular, to drive profitability—we should not lose sight of the fact that the Post Office continues to be the largest retail network in the UK—the electronic offering of banking services from a range of post offices is entirely consistent with the good work being undertaken by Post Office management to ensure that the units are commercially viable wherever they exist in the country.

Oliver Heald: I welcome the Minister back and congratulate him on the birth of his daughter.
	Recent American research has shown by a huge margin that the public would rather deal with the Government through other methods rather than the web. Low public take-up of e-government in this country seems to confirm that. Why, then, has the Minister ordered that all external public services should be web-based? Has he not seen the misery caused to pensioners by scrapping the pension order book? Is he now going to force them to apply for other services online and, if so, what is the timetable?

Douglas Alexander: I hardly know where to begin in answering that question. First, pensioners will, of course, continue to be able to receive cash over the counter at their post offices, despite the scaremongering of Opposition politicians. Secondly, it is a characteristically Luddite position of the Conservative party to suggest that the Government should not match other sectors in society in providing web-based offerings of its services. Thirdly, I would point out that considerable progress has been made in getting the UK online under the present Government. On broadband access, for example, considerable progress has been made, and both the public and private sector have worked effectively to drive up the take-up level, so it ill behoves the hon. Gentleman to suggest that his constituents would not want access to those services.

Public Appointments

Malcolm Savidge: What action is being taken to open up public appointments to groups who have traditionally been under-represented.

Douglas Alexander: The Government want boards of public bodies to be both appointed on merit and representative of society as a whole. The 2003 publication "Delivering Diversity in Public Appointments" outlines the action being taken by each Department of Government to increase diversity on the boards of their public bodies, and the targets that have been set for 2006.

Malcolm Savidge: While welcoming the targets for diversity, which my hon. Friend has outlined, will he provide some practical examples of what the Government are doing to achieve them? Would one of my constituents from an under-represented group, for example, receive any practical assistance from the Government?

Douglas Alexander: I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, because it highlights the point that I sought to make in my previous answer. A new website is now available from the Cabinet Office—www.publicappts-vacs.gov.uk—in which available public vacancies are set out. Anyone wanting to access those opportunities to serve on a public body will now be able to do so in the north-east of Scotland and the south-west of England. There are a range of different ways in which those who do not have access to the web can obtain information—a newsletter is also provided—and I want to ensure that my hon. Friend is made aware of those opportunities so that he can, in turn, communicate them to his constituents.

Eric Forth: I suppose that we should be modestly grateful that the Minister mentioned merit, but can he give us a guarantee that, in the matter of public appointments, merit will never be undermined or compromised by an obsession with so-called diversity?

Douglas Alexander: If I recollect correctly, that is not the first time that the right hon. Gentleman has put that point to me. It is fundamentally the case, as I have set out previously from the Dispatch Box, that there is no inconsistency whatever between appointments on merit and appointments on representational aspirations. I believe that we should aspire to make our public bodies reflect the diverse nature of modern Britain. In that sense, I see no inconsistency between ensuring appointment on the basis of merit and making sure that we have diverse public bodies.

Andrew Dismore: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of attempting to achieve that would be to pass the Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill, which is currently being blocked by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)? That measure would ensure proper appointment to the civil service on merit rather than through long-out-of-date rules on nationality. Is it not time that the civil service reflected the society in which we live, rather than the society that the right hon. Gentleman thinks exists, but may never have existed outside his own rather peculiar imagination?

Douglas Alexander: I am cautious about intruding on a private argument but, like many colleagues, I was disappointed at the failure last week to make progress on that Bill. My hon. Friend makes his point well: we must make sure that the civil service is genuinely updated in terms of its ability to ensure that diversity is achieved.

Policy Development

Alan Whitehead: What guidance he has issued to regulatory offices concerning policy development in their areas of regulation.

Douglas Alexander: The Government have recommended that all Departments and regulators follow the Cabinet Office guidance entitled "Better Policy Making: A Guide to Regulatory Impact Assessments". That guidance is available on the Cabinet Office website, and in the Library of the House.

Alan Whitehead: Does my hon. Friend accept that it is important to maintain the distinction between the policy-making function—that is, the steering function—of the Government and legislature, and the implementing function of regulatory bodies? What steps does he intend to take to ensure that legislation that amends or changes the nature of regulatory bodies maintains that distinction?

Douglas Alexander: I spoke at the recent conference of independent regulators, at which we addressed the specific challenge involved in recognising the distinctive role of regulators in the area of policy making. I also point out that the Government accepted the 14 recommendations in respect of independent regulators contained in the report from the Better Regulation Task Force entitled "Independent Regulators." I shall ensure that my hon. Friend receives a full copy of that report, and of the Government's response to it.

Unpaid Advisers

Norman Baker: If he will take steps to increase the accountability of unpaid advisers working (a) within his Department and (b) across Government.

Douglas Alexander: In its response to the ninth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Government agreed to amend the ministerial code to make it clear that Ministers are accountable for the management and discipline of their unpaid advisers. This amendment will be incorporated into the next version of the ministerial code.

Norman Baker: Does the Minister accept that, although the model contract for special advisers provides some tenuous accountability for them, paragraph 51 of the ministerial codes states that there is no contractual relationship between unpaid advisers and the Department involved? Does that not mean that there is therefore no accountability in respect of people such as Lord Birt and Lord Levy?

Douglas Alexander: I simply do not accept that characterisation, and I refer the hon. Gentleman to my initial answer. We have accepted that the ministerial code needs to be amended, and the relevant precedent suggests that that should happen at the beginning of a new Parliament. The ninth report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life was published in April 2003, and the Government's response to it was published in September of that year. It may be of assistance if I share with the House the substance of that response. As I have said, the Government accepted the case for amending the next version of the ministerial code to make it clear that Ministers are personally accountable for the management and discipline of their unpaid advisers. Further, the code will make it clear that Ministers must provide a level of information about unpaid advisers similar to that provided for special advisers. That information will include numbers, names and details of particular expertise, if appropriate. Finally, the letter of appointment for unpaid advisers will be amended so that it includes the requirement to uphold the political impartiality of civil servants, and the requirement not to use official resources for party political activity.
	I understand the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), but the Government have already gone a long way towards addressing it.

Bichard Inquiry Report

David Blunkett: With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the Bichard inquiry report.
	Last December, following Ian Huntley's conviction, I asked Sir Michael Bichard to conduct an inquiry into the events leading up to the murder of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. I am publishing his report in full today. The families have shown great courage and dignity. We extend again today our most heartfelt sympathy to them.
	I am grateful to Sir Michael for the speed and thoroughness of his inquiry. We have accepted his critique. In doing so, we must not forget that, as he states,
	"Huntley alone was responsible for these most awful murders. None of the actions or failures of any of the witnesses or the institutions they represented led to the deaths of the girls."
	Sir Michael's report uncovers serious failures in recording and managing information. These failures include local systems for recording, retaining and accessing data. They include national frameworks for inspection and information exchange, and the systems that underpin them.
	As a consequence, the report is wide ranging in its recommendations. These apply to a range of public services and Government Departments. I am therefore responding on behalf of the Government as a whole.
	We are, in principle, accepting Sir Michael's main recommendations and will act on them immediately.
	It is the Government's task to ensure clear national standards as well as providing strong leadership. But other national bodies and local agencies also have a key role in strengthening the system.
	Let me turn to the specific recommendations. Sir Michael recommends the introduction of a national intelligence system. Information collected should be shared and acted upon before an individual is employed in a sensitive post. Let me describe how this will operate. The police national computer is the cornerstone of police information systems, but its task is to register recorded crime. It holds basic information—for example, names and addresses of offenders. We are working with forces to improve the quality and timeliness of data. It is necessary for it to keep up with the growing and changing demands on the police service.
	But the police national computer does not hold intelligence information—for example, where someone has been questioned in relation to repeated allegations of sexual assault. Until now, all 43 forces in England and Wales have operated individual systems for handling this kind of information. This should no longer be the case. As Sir Michael puts it, we cannot have a situation in which—and I quote—
	"local accountability will be used to defend ineffective local systems when a national system would be more appropriate".
	This report marks a watershed in how police forces and authorities will work together to procure the intelligence and information systems needed to do the job properly. No longer can the historical justification of operational independence take precedence over the imperative of being able to track and deal with offenders effectively.
	We are therefore now introducing the first national police intelligence computer system—entitled "Impact". "Impact" will ensure that all forces use the same system to manage and share intelligence information. As an interim measure, we are bringing forward the nationwide introduction of the police local exchange—PLX. It will begin this autumn and be complete by next spring. It will provide an easily searchable index of all those on whom any police force holds information. Sir Michael commends this.
	But systems are only as good as the information that they hold. In this case, because records were handled so badly and deleted, a national intelligence system could not have identified the concerns. Sir Michael therefore concludes that the police need clearer, more soundly based rules, for recording, retaining and reviewing, as well as deleting information.
	Before the inquiry was established, the Data Protection Act 1998 was criticised as a contributory factor. While it is no doubt complex, it embodies important principles. Sir Michael concludes that the loss of intelligence cannot be blamed on the Act. He does not believe that radical revisions are necessary. It is crucial that rules on managing information are clearly understood. I am therefore introducing, by the end of this year, a statutory code of practice on police information handling. All 43 forces will deal with intelligence information in the same way. This will be backed up by detailed operational guidance. Effective training, management and inspection will ensure that it is fully understood and consistently applied.
	The code of practice will link closely to the police national intelligence model. This sets out how forces should collect and handle intelligence. It is already providing a more consistent structure. The code will ensure that all forces are required to make the most effective use of this structure. Those few forces still not operating this model must do so now.
	But those recommendations apply substantially beyond policing. The report recommends that social services should routinely notify the police when a crime against a child is committed or suspected. Sir Michael concludes that that is not always the case. The social services database needs to hold details of all alleged sexual offenders involved with named children, and should be easily searchable. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills is working urgently on that. The Department will shortly receive a serious case review report from Sir Christopher Kelly on other specific lessons for social services.
	Sir Michael has highlighted the importance of robust selection and recruitment. He has recommended that those recruiting staff in schools must be properly trained in safeguarding children. My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister for Children have agreed that selection panels should contain at least one panel member properly trained in that work. Sir Michael also calls for stronger, more consistent vetting and a new system for registering those working with children and vulnerable adults.We will therefore urgently consider his recommendation that a register be created to bring together all the relevant information held on individuals in a way that is easily accessible. We need to consider how that fits with and enhances the service already provided by the Criminal Records Bureau. We will also need to make the link to proposals for identity cards.
	Let me now turn to concerns about the two forces involved in this tragic incident. Sir Michael highlights deficiencies by Cambridgeshire on the checks into Ian Huntley's suitability. Sir Ronnie Flanagan's parallel report for Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary into the investigation, which is being published today, also highlights concerns about processes and the actions of individuals. However, Ian Huntley is behind bars. Cambridgeshire acted effectively to achieve that. It also asked the Metropolitan police to review its procedures at the time of the investigation. Failings were neither systemic nor corporate. I should also add that mistakes have been fully acknowledged and actions have been taken to ensure they do not recur.
	But much graver concerns are raised about the senior management of Humberside. There were, to quote the report, "very serious failings", some of which the chief constable only became aware of when hearing evidence to the inquiry. Sir Michael finds the lack of awareness of the scale of those failings over such a long period of time to be "deeply shocking". It is Sir Michael's view that the
	"final responsibility for these serious failures rests with Chief Constable David Westwood".
	It is difficult to disagree with that. Paragraph 2.94 could not be clearer. It says of Mr Westwood that
	"he was chief constable from March 1999 and, as such, became ultimately responsible for information management and IT systems. The wide-ranging and systemic failures . . . existed in March 1999 and therefore predated him becoming Chief Constable. However, they were not identified and continued for a considerable period thereafter. Chief Constable Westwood must take personal responsibility for the continuation of those failures. From 1 September 1997, he had been Deputy Chief Constable, the second most senior officer on the force".
	The role of any chief constable has to be one in which the public have confidence. In the face of serious criticism, it is my responsibility as Home Secretary to question whether people in Humberside can continue to have that confidence. Mindful of our duty of care, I asked Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, Sir Keith Povey, to discuss Sir Michael's findings with the chief constable yesterday. The strength of the report's criticism of him has led me to conclude that, using the powers available to me under the Police Act 1996, as amended by the Police Reform Act 2002, I should require Humberside police authority to suspend Mr. Westwood as chief constable forthwith.
	I have also invited the police authority to consider what steps it should take, having regard to its statutory duty under section 6 of the 1996 Act to maintain an efficient and effective force. I have asked it to report to me by 6 July. I also asked Sir Keith to ensure that the professional judgment of Her Majesty's inspectorate is available to the police authority. When I receive the authority's report I will decide whether to initiate the process that could lead to the retirement or resignation of the chief constable.
	Finally, let me repeat my thanks to Sir Michael for his work. I believe he is right to suggest the discipline of reconvening his inquiry in six months.
	Mr. Speaker, we know that this must, once again, be a terrible time for the families of Jessica and Holly. We owe it to them to make substantial progress as rapidly as possible in ensuring that these failures are not repeated ever again. I commend Sir Michael's report to the House.

David Davis: I start by thanking the Home Secretary for giving me unusually early sight of the report and the statement. That is not just the normal courtesy we show on such occasions; his action reflects the fact that this is a question of public safety, and that will be recognised in my response.
	I wholeheartedly endorse the Home Secretary's remarks about the dignity shown by the families of Holly and Jessica. I am sure that that is true for everybody in the House.
	I welcome almost everything that the Home Secretary said today and I also welcome the report of Sir Michael Bichard. It is exhaustive and I agree with most of it. I consider his decision to reconvene in six months' time to review progress not just a good idea but something that should become standard practice for reports such as this in future.
	The report makes it clear that Cambridgeshire criminal records bureau was so focused on the introduction of new systems that it failed to carry out crucial checks into Ian Huntley's background. We must ensure that such failures never happen again, and much that the Home Secretary said about that will do just that. However, Sir Michael says that even if Cambridgeshire had got it right, Ian Huntley's record would still have been missed because of other failures in the system, most notably in Humberside police.
	In my view, there were two failures in Humberside policing. One relates to information technology, but the other relates to the handling of the Huntley case. Even before any weeding took place, Ian Huntley's record of behaviour should have led police to act. Consider the following: there was an allegation of unlawful sex with a 15-year-old in August 1995; there was an allegation of unlawful sex with another 15-year-old in May 1996; and there was an allegation of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old, also in May 1996. That was not an IT failure; it was a failure of policing.
	Those offences were known at exactly the same time, before there was any opportunity for them to be weeded by Humberside police, so it is no wonder that PC Harding in his report, which is reproduced on page 52, in section 1.229 of the Bichard report, said:
	"It is quite clear that Huntley is a serial sex attacker and is at liberty to continue his activities."
	Sir Michael says that no one thing could have prevented what happened. In fact, if the police had acted on that sequence of events, Ian Huntley would presumably have been locked up. Incidentally, that failure preceded the current chief constable's arrival in post. His failures relate to the failures of the IT system and the consequences that flow from that. In view of the fact that the Home Secretary has, in effect, today initiated a quasi-judicial process under the Police Reform Act 2002 in respect of David Westwood, which I do not wish to prejudice, I shall say no more today about his direct role.
	The report states that social services should report incidents of sex with minors to the police. I agree. However, the report also says that there are "exceptional circumstances" when the police should not be notified. What exactly are those exceptional circumstances? When an adult is engaged in a sexual relationship with a child, I believe that there are no circumstances where the police should not be informed. We now know that, in 1995, social services knew of an allegation that Huntley was having sex with a 15-year-old girl, but apparently—it is not entirely clear—chose not to inform the police. That was at exactly the same time as the cases that I cited a moment ago. The social services were not, and could not be, in possession of all the facts relating to public safety. Therefore, they should not make that decision. So will the Home Secretary review that specific aspect and consider the option of making the requirement to notify the police of such offences absolute?
	Much of the report focuses properly on the failure of information handling, primarily by Humberside police but also by the Cambridge criminal records bureau, and generic failures by the Police Information Technology Organisation, the Association of Chief Police Officers, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the Home Office. The report properly criticises Humberside police's IT practices, and it criticises the lack of a national police IT system. It calls for the introduction of such a system as soon as possible. It does not say whether the problems of Humberside are replicated in other forces, although I suspect that they may be. Neither does the report deal with a problem that we all know about: Whitehall in general and the Home Office in particular have a very poor track record of implementing computer systems.
	I welcome the Home Secretary's comments on the police local exchange system—the PLX system. I also welcome his announcement about the police national computer system—the so-called Impact system—but may I make two suggestions? First, will he commission Sir Michael Bichard in the next six months to review all the IT systems in the 43 forces, to establish the extent of the problem? Secondly, to minimise the risk of another computer disaster, will the forces use either the best practice that he identifies, or the already operational Scottish system, as the basis for the new national system?
	The failure to implement a system should have been identified much sooner. Sir Michael Bichard states in his report:
	"HMIC could and should have been more proactive. Information systems are of obvious importance to policing, and they could have been inspected effectively with relative ease."
	Has the Home Secretary any proposal to reform or improve the capability of Her Majesty's inspectorate in that respect?
	Sir Michael recommends a registration system for all those working with children. Will the Home Secretary tell us whether such a system would apply to people who work in charities and voluntary groups—volunteers, rather than employees—because they often add great value and enjoyment to children's lives? Although child protection is clearly paramount, there is a balance of justice to be established. A series of false allegations can effectively destroy a career, as was recently the case with a teacher, ironically, in Humberside—the Jonathan Dunning-Davies case that I have discussed privately with the Home Secretary before.
	Sir Michael envisages an
	"appeal process for applicants who were refused registration."
	Sir Michael is absolutely right, but how does the Home Secretary believe that the appeals system would work? Would people know who is making the allegation against them, and if not, how could it be challenged? Who would decide what information is held on record, and how could that be challenged? Would the process be judicial? I recognise that those are difficult issues, but they need to be addressed. The Home Secretary, I know, recognises the burden that would be placed on the police. Humberside police, to take the example that we are dealing with, will process 50,000 information requests this year. That implies about 2 million for England and Wales. How does he intend to progress that issue?
	I also welcome the Home Secretary's proposals for a code on the Data Protection Act 1998. Of course, the Bichard report properly dismissed the Humberside policy authority's excuses in that respect, but this is not the only case of serious misunderstandings with that Act, so I welcome his review and the writing of a statutory code.
	It is not just Humberside and Cambridgeshire police who should read the report today. Every police force and social services department in the country should read and learn the lessons of the report because, if we fail, it will be a catastrophe measured in human tragedies.

David Blunkett: I welcome the shadow Home Secretary's measured tones and approach, which are appropriate on this occasion, and in reciprocation, I wish to share with him and the Liberal Democrats the opportunity to get such aspects right in the months ahead. The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that it was not simply that an information system went wrong, but that a recording did not take place so a record was not available. It was inevitable that such a failure would lead to critical information being missed. I take the point entirely in relation to the information that the right hon. Gentleman gave me earlier today about a local case, which I shall come to in a minute.
	Regrettably, the system of "weeding out", as it is described in Sir Michael's report, is almost a bizarre experience in Humberside. I draw hon. Members' attention—if they are prepared to look through the report—to paragraph 2.58, which describes a system in Humberside that was so dysfunctional that there was no clarity whatsoever in what was meant by the words "delete", "weed" or "eliminate", or in the way in which officers were to go about their business of deciding what should be held or deleted from the system.
	Of course, that led to the situation, which the right hon. Gentleman described, whereby incidents in which Ian Huntley was involved with young girls before those tragic events were missed time after time. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the examples that he gave predated David Westwood's appointment as either deputy or subsequently chief constable. Regrettably, there were 11 incidents in total. Nine of them were of a sexual nature and all of them related to incidents—some in a very short time, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—that should clearly have been picked up by those involved, as well as by the systems, which were clearly inadequate or not in place.
	Obviously, it is absolutely crucial that we learn the lessons. The right hon. Gentleman asked me what was meant by the phrase "exceptional cases", where automatic referral by social services or other agencies to the police would not take place. Clearly, those incidents would not have been exceptional, so the kind of incident that Huntley was involved in while in Humberside should have been, and must be in any future circumstance, referred to the police and the information held properly, not deleted.
	The exceptions that Michael Bichard was referring to take us back to the sex offenders and sex offences legislation, when we had a delicate debate about how to deal with those around the age of 15 and 16 who are experimenting with their sexuality and, as we retained the law as it was, how to implement it sensitively and not be run ragged by those organisations that wanted us to change it dramatically. So we are back to the use of common sense.
	Regrettably—I think the right hon. Gentleman referred to this, and we are mindful of it—if common sense had prevailed, of course, we would not be here this afternoon discussing the report. Common sense would have led people to understand the relationship between one act and another, and to put two and two together. So those incidents were not exceptions and there can be no absolute guarantee of anything, but we can pick up the lessons in the report and use them effectively.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the new systems. He is right to say that the Government do not have a good record on the implementation of national information technology. That is partly why there was such a reluctance to get engaged at an earlier stage and to implement the national intelligence model before putting the national computer in place. That decision was taken by a board consisting of the three partners—the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities and the Government—back in 2000.
	At the time of the White paper in 2001, I allocated £11 million to the initial establishment of such a system, again under the old tripartite approach, operated and led not by the Home Office, but by the services themselves. We have now taken responsibility, which, as I said, we need to do. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who was in the Home Office, will recall the necessity of sometimes knocking heads together. When 43 forces operate entirely different information technology systems, in a world that demands something very different, there must be a national system.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked me two specific questions, one of which was on the follow-through and whether Sir Michael Bichard should be engaged to do that job. I have spoken to Sir Michael. Other than reviewing what he has done, he is not keen to get engaged in being the arbiter on, or even the arm for, implementation. The right hon. Gentleman also asked the sensible question about what will happen if Sir Michael does not want that job. It will, of course, be the job of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, and we need to work with Sir Keith Povey to ensure that it can draw on and use outside expertise in the assessment and review of information technology systems at a local level, where the inspectors—understandably in terms of their histories—might not have access to that expertise themselves.We also need to learn from Scotland, which, with two very large police forces and six very small ones, managed to get its act together simultaneously with the introduction of the national intelligence model. There is much to learn from that, which we should do.
	Registration systems are a difficult matter. My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Education and Skills and the Minister for Children will look at the recommendation of enhanced disclosure for all staff working in schools and similar educational establishments. We are extremely sympathetic to achieving that. There is, however, a danger, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, of wrongdoings as a result of accusations that are made against people.
	Although we will examine a non-bureaucratic light-touch way of providing an appeal, we must also exercise judgment on how people are dealt with in those circumstances. I am reluctant to have a system in which people have to register in advance of any thought of taking a job in order simply to work with children. When they do work with children, whether they are employed or volunteers in the voluntary and community sector, they have to be checked out through the Criminal Records Bureau. The question that arises again is whether it should be a normal or enhanced disclosure.
	Let me confirm the right hon. Gentleman's sensible conclusion to his contribution. The report is not for Humberside and Cambridgeshire forces alone; it goes right across the board for services dealing with children at local and national levels, for the Government and local government, and for the police and social services. Above all, it is to be taken seriously and implemented by all of us who care about ensuring that never again will we have to stand here dealing with the tragic death of a Jessica or a Holly.

Mark Oaten: I am sure that the whole House will feel let down by the series of mistakes involved in the case. Although the report does not blame any individual for what happened, there will remain for ever a doubt that perhaps something could have been done to avoid the tragic death of those two young girls.
	I thank the Home Secretary for advance notice of his statement and warmly welcome his speedy response to the Bichard recommendations. However, he needs to explain in more detail why the Government abandoned plans to create a national database, which was, after all, recommended 10 years ago. He now plans to establish that database. Will he set out the time scale involved in putting in place the Impact system? Will he also explain what role he sees for the Criminal Records Bureau in the future? Does he share my concern that, with improved police data, the Criminal Records Bureau could become the weak link in the system? Does he have plans to review the Criminal Records Bureau or, indeed, replace it with a new system?
	Sir Michael talks about new systems for registering those working with children—perhaps making them carry a card with biometric details on it. Does the Home Secretary support that? If so, how would it work? Does he share my concern that that would mean schools, scout clubs and church groups having to buy expensive equipment to read those cards? Finally, will he confirm whether he or the police authority has the final decision on the future of the chief constable for Humberside?

David Blunkett: I was not entirely sure from the hon. Gentleman's opening gambit whether he accepts, as we have, the overall thrust of the Bichard inquiry. However, I accept the tone in which he delivered his questions.
	The hon. Gentleman asked why the initial proposal for the national intelligence system was abandoned. Plans were considered by the board, which was part of the tripartite approach that I described, in 2000. The decision was taken in relation to implementation of the national intelligence model, to be followed by the technology and the development of the system to ensure that once that was in place, it could be implemented. As I said, the decision was taken in Scotland to do the two things simultaneously. That is much easier in Scotland, with a population of 5 million, than in England and Wales, but nevertheless doing the two things together must have been a fine decision.
	I have been careful not to open up any party political issues in the statement, and I shall continue to take that line. However, people must reflect on the pressure that Governments of all persuasions have been under, and central Governments have not—although Oppositions tend to take a contrary view of this—interfered with, or changed the balance of, the tripartite approach and, therefore, the decentralised autonomy and operational responsibility of police services across the country. At the time, the decisions lay with a non-professional ACPO leadership, which now has a full-time presidency. As a result of the decisions on local autonomy, the mechanisms did not exist for ACPO or the Home Office to go ahead.
	I am spelling this out as gently as I can. In terms of what has been demanded of me since I have been Home Secretary, I have not got into—although I could easily do so—the issue of leaving the police service alone to develop the sharing of information and their IT capacity. I have spelt out that we accept that there will have to be a sea change in terms of leading that change, while working with ACPO, police authorities and local forces.
	On Impact, we think that it may well take two years to get the system up and running. We intend to build on the police local exchange system, which will be in place by next spring, to do that. It will provide access to information held across the forces. We do not believe, and nor does Sir Michael, either in his report or in his press conference at 12 noon today, that the Criminal Records Bureau is at fault. He believes that with enhanced disclosures and the disclosure of information currently not available to the Criminal Records Bureau, the system will work better.
	In my response to the shadow Home Secretary, I referred to disclosure—namely, what is it about someone's behaviour that constitutes that information being held and exposed to other people? We need to reflect on that, in terms not of rejecting the proposal, but of getting the balance right. I am often criticised for doing the opposite, so today I am being cautious about protecting individuals from wrongful accusation or from information being exchanged which has no basis in fact. Four million disclosures have been dealt with by the Criminal Records Bureau, which is now working effectively. I want to ensure that we do not disrupt it and make matters worse. Of course, it did not exist at the time, and even if it had it could not have helped, given that the information was not held and was so badly handled—that includes the issue of whether Cambridgeshire made the appropriate approaches to Humberside—that it would have made no difference.
	The hon. Gentleman asked me about the card, which we are going to investigate. We share the concern that there should not be a massive bureaucracy. It will obviously be easier to deal with the matter if biometric ID cards are introduced and a database is available, but we want to discuss how that would work in the House and in Committee when we introduce substantive legislation. Again, people will want to test our proposals and make sure that action is proportionate. Overall, I hope that we can all work together to make sure that the sensible suggestions that have been made can be implemented as speedily as possible.

Shona McIsaac: Does my right hon. Friend appreciate the sense of disbelief in Ian Huntley's former hunting grounds of Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Immingham, when his past was revealed after his conviction? I am sorry to say that that has left public confidence in Humberside police at rock bottom. Given that the record that described Ian Huntley as a serial sex attacker was deleted, does my right hon. Friend share Chief Constable Westwood's view, as expressed on 17 December, that that had to be done for data protection purposes, or does he believe that it was because of the wide-ranging and systemic failures detailed in this shocking report?

David Blunkett: I am sure that my hon. Friend and other Members representing the area covered by the Humberside force, including the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), will share my determination to restore and enhance the force's credibility and people's confidence in its efficiency and effectiveness. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I will be cautious in what I say because of the process agreed by the House, which was affirmed in a protocol of the Association of Chief Police Officers, and because of the national negotiating machinery that came into force on 1 June this year to deal with these cases fairly. All that I can say is that Sir Michael's report—we share his view—demonstrates absolutely that the Data Protection Act 1998 was not responsible for the deletion or for the failures. It was unfortunate, to say the least, that six months ago, the chief constable sought to demonstrate that it was.

James Paice: May I thank the Home Secretary very much indeed for allowing me to see the report a day early, thus enabling me to read it carefully? I add my thanks to Sir Michael Bichard for his robust report, which details, as the Home Secretary said, a catalogue of shortcomings by many individuals, forces and agencies involved in the case. The report will obviously be read in my constituency with great concern and care, and there will be close examination of the proposals for change.
	In particular, the report lists the failures of the IT systems used by the police and the failure to develop and integrate them. I therefore strongly welcome the Home Secretary's commitment to a PLX system, the code of practice and the future development of the Impact system. For my constituents in Soham, nothing can undo the tragedy that befell us. While there will undoubtedly be demands for calls for retribution or scapegoats, the overriding desire is to know how that evil man could walk the streets of Soham, and to ensure that such things never happen again. Although there were a few failings by the school and by Cambridgeshire police, it is clear that when Huntley applied for the job at the school, the die was already cast. His records had gone and, most staggering of all, he had not been prosecuted, despite, as we have heard, being described by the police as a serial sex attacker. Pages 89 to 92 of the report describe an astonishing sequence of events from which Huntley appeared to escape unscathed. My constituents and, I believe, the whole country will be horrified to learn that so many offences could take place almost simultaneously without the police and social services being able to co-ordinate their activities and protect the public from such a man.
	What action is the Home Secretary taking to look not just at those specific failings, but at the way in which sex offences are prosecuted? In particular, Sir Michael makes some trenchant comments about prosecutions where there is an admission of under-age sex by the perpetrator, even if the victim does not wish to pursue the matter in court. Can the Home Secretary say something more about Sir Ronnie Flanagan's review of the investigation of the offence by Cambridgeshire police? He said that the report has been published, but is that the whole report? Does he accept that unless my constituents are fully informed, sadly, the speculation about the conduct of the investigation will continue? When does he expect the Kelly report into social services to be published, and will the relevant Secretary of State make a statement?
	As the Member of Parliament for Soham, I very much hope that this is the last occasion when this dreadful crime not only comes before this House but is the subject of more media coverage. While the names of Holly and Jessica will live on in Soham's history, my constituents, including, I believe, the families, never want to hear the names of Huntley and Carr again. May I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your personal concern and interest in my constituents' welfare during this awful case?

David Blunkett: I think that everyone in the House shares entirely the sentiments and emotions that the hon. Gentleman just described, and I thank him for the way in which he has liaised with the families, making it possible for us to work with them and keep them informed to ensure that they knew what was happening and when. While that did not bring comfort, at least it ensured that they had confidence that we were acting properly.
	Sir Christopher Kelly has been encouraged to publish his report as quickly as possible. It is important in my view, and that of the Secretary of State for Health and the Minister for Children, that we have that report so that we can act on its recommendations in tandem with our work on the Bichard report. The hon. Gentleman asked about Ronnie Flanagan's report, which I am publishing today. It deals with the way in which the initial days were handled, including whether the force should have presumed immediately that it was dealing with an abduction and potential murder rather than missing children, but it also commends the force, when it recognised the enormity of events, on the speed and effectiveness of its action. Again, I concur entirely with the hon. Gentleman in accepting that people in the locality will want to know that Sir Ronnie's recommendations or observations are introduced urgently and implemented.

Austin Mitchell: May I welcome the speedy action by my right hon. Friend, particularly the measures that he announced today, which will reassure many people? I emphasise the importance of his comments on a statutory code on intelligence, and about the PLX and Impact systems, all of which are most welcome. However, it is not enough just to dump everything on Chief Constable Westwood, because the report highlights failings in my right hon. Friend's Department. It says, first, that Her Majesty's inspectors failed to identify the computer mess in Humberside, make recommendations, or do anything about the problem until 2003. Secondly, the Home Office failed to set rules and conditions, or to provide a national code of practice on intelligence services, including what was to be added, deleted and so on from records, which was partly responsible for the confusion in Humberside. Thirdly, our national computer system was inadequate, so that forces were unable to access records held by other forces, and the system could not even flag up the fact that information was held by other forces. Those, too, are failings. I hope that they will be investigated with the same thoroughness and that my right hon. Friend can tell us why our police are so much less adequate in respect of national computer records than the police in Scotland.

David Blunkett: I do not demur in any way from the view that responsibility for getting matters right rests across the board. I am seeking not to dump on anyone. I am using powers laid out in the Police Act 1996 and the Police Reform Act 2002 commensurate with the protocol that came into force on 1 June and was agreed with chief constables. If ever there were a case, after a thoroughgoing report and given the language used by Sir Michael Bichard, for the implementation of that protocol, it is now. The authority itself and the subsequent representations of Chief Constable Westwood will be part of that process.
	I fully accept that there should have been codes of practice and intervention earlier. That is why, as my hon. Friend will remember, the 2002 Act provided for regulation, codes and directions, which were not available previously. It is also why we set up the national centre for policing excellence, and why I indicated today that the tripartite approach and decentralised autonomy are not acceptable in the context of national information exchange. I have already explained why, in Scotland, the chief constables decided to go ahead simultaneously with their national intelligence model and their computer system, whereas in England those taking part in the decision making chose to do the first, and then to follow with the second.
	From 2001, when I allocated the £11 million, and from 2003, when we issued the code, and following the steps that we have taken to develop the PLX and the Impact systems, the new £500 million Airwave communication system and the new national database for DNA, and the investment that we have put into the Criminal Records Bureau over the past three years, we have invested more than ever before. That, complemented by the £600 million that we allocated from 2002 to the whole criminal justice information technology system to join up, as Sir Michael recommends, the courts with the policing and social services systems, is something of which I shall be proud.

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I inform the House that I allowed the constituency Member of Parliament to ask several supplementaries for good reason, but from now I expect only one supplementary to be put to the Home Secretary.

Charles Hendry: Does the Home Secretary accept that there is a gap in the existing legislation, in that people coming from abroad to work in schools are not subject to CRB checks? Does he agree that it seems unfair that whereas people of many years' standing in this country cannot take up a position in a school until they have been checked by the CRB, someone coming from abroad about whom we know nothing can start on day one? In the interests of child protection, should not the same checking criteria apply to everybody?

David Blunkett: There is a checking system, including through the agencies and bodies from which the recommendation came. It applies primarily to supply teachers and to the recruitment of teachers on a temporary basis from overseas, but it could apply to others. I accept, and Sir Michael makes the point, that we need to be more thorough in carrying out checks. That challenge has been accepted more generally and it will be possible to meet it by means of the ID card database, where we will have to do a check back as part of the process of checking an individual's true identity. We will therefore be more easily able to check with the police forces and authorities in the country of origin.

Debra Shipley: I very much welcome the report, which is extremely important, and my right hon. Friend's response to it. It is ludicrous that the police have not been automatically required to share information across forces. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have said that they do not want such a failing to occur ever again, but in my view it will happen again. Since my Protection of Children Act 1999, I have repeatedly drawn to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children and my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety, who are present, the need for the retrospective checking of people who are in position. Prior to the establishment of the Criminal Records Bureau, many of them were not required to be checked. They remain in position and some are known paedophiles. There is a vital need for retrospective checking to take place. It needs to be phased in so that it does not overwhelm the system, but it must happen. The responses that I have received so far from Ministers and the Secretary of State suggest to me that it is not in the Government's programme to do so.

David Blunkett: Sir Michael touches on that. I commend my hon. Friend on her tenacity and commitment to that important cause. First, whenever someone changes job, checks are automatically undertaken for the new employer. Secondly—Sir Michael touches on this—we need to consider introducing a review process for those who have not been checked but are working with children. I merely ask—this is not ducking the issue—for time to do that, if we are not to dislocate once again the system for the thoroughgoing checks that are currently being made on anyone who applies for the first time to work with, be with or volunteer to take part in activities alongside children, so that what it is feasible to implement is balanced against the necessity to provide protection through a checking process on a national basis, with the thoroughness that did not exist three years ago.

Keith Simpson: The Home Secretary outlined and acknowledged the failures in the Cambridgeshire police and the Humberside police relating both to systems and to policing, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) also emphasised. May I pick up on one point that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) made? Going back several years, those police forces were inspected by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. Did HMIC at any time flag up those weaknesses to the Home Office? If so, what action was taken, and if not, why not?

David Blunkett: I have already acknowledged that that is a fair and sensible point, and it is one that Sir Michael makes with regard to HMIC's capability and the thoroughness of its activity in this area. The shadow Home Secretary made the point succinctly, and I have accepted that HMIC must raise its game in this area and needs expertise to do the job. It had certainly reported on the Humberside and Cambridgeshire forces, because regrettably we know where those forces have lain in all other national assessments, including, in the case of Humberside, the recent baseline assessment. What was not clearly emphasised and therefore not appreciated was the enormity of the failure of information systems. That is something that I want to put right.

Anne Campbell: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and the report from Sir Michael Bichard. This appalling murder case uncovered weaknesses in some parts of the system and in some police forces. I know that Cambridgeshire police will take the recommendations very seriously and will already have considered the implications. Despite the fact that a national database will be in place, will my right hon. Friend issue a statement to all police forces asking them to review urgently their current procedures for storing and retrieving information?

David Blunkett: Yes, the code that we are issuing under the Police Reform Act 2002 will do precisely that. The inspection process will be critical in making sure that it happens.

Andrew Turner: In the Home Secretary's very welcome statement, he referred to the need for social services databases to hold details of all alleged sexual offenders involved with named children. Does he realise the particular vulnerability of those who work with children on a day-to-day professional basis—I am speaking, of course, of schoolteachers—to unjust and unfounded allegations? In the very delicate balance of risk that he has to strike, will he take care to ensure that teachers in particular are protected from unjustified allegations destroying their careers and, in some cases, their lives?

David Blunkett: I accept entirely that it is a very delicate and sensitive balance, which is why we have not rushed in today and made any bombastic statements or indications of unprecedented action. We need to try to get this right, reflecting on what Sir Michael rightly indicates is a mismatch between the holding of convictions and the holding of information, which, taken together, would have led to a conviction in the case of Ian Huntley. We need to do so precisely for the reasons enunciated—there are people who become vulnerable to unwarranted accusations that can destroy their professional well-being and livelihood. With regard to the teaching profession, my right hon. Friends in the Department for Education and Skills are examining how we can ensure a faster process of dealing with such allegations in order to meet the challenge of investigating them thoroughly, but not destroying the lives of those who are accused of taking the actions.

Ian Cawsey: For four years before entering this House, I had the great honour of being the chairman of the Humberside police authority. I saw at first hand the great skill and professionalism of the serving officers, who will be devastated by the report, which comes on the back of a recent poor performance assessment. There is no point in denying what is in front of us. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he will work as quickly as possible with the Humberside police authority to resolve these management issues and let Humberside police rebuild their reputation as a modern, efficient force, as the people of Humberside will wish and as the actions of a great majority of their serving officers deserve?

David Blunkett: I appreciate my hon. Friend's experience and knowledge. I have made it clear through my officials to the chairman of the police authority, Colin Inglis, that we are prepared, and that the inspectorate and outside services will be drawn on, to give whatever help and support are needed to the deputy who will be acting chief constable for the weeks ahead, and to the police authority. I appeal to them to take up that help. In the end, the service that is provided to the people of Humberside is the sole concern of the police authority and those who work for the service. Confidence in the effectiveness and efficiency of that service is paramount in all our minds.

Andrew Miller: In 1997, my right hon. Friend's Department undertook widespread consultation before the introduction of the Data Protection Act 1998, which Sir Michael said does not need radical revision. Will my right hon. Friend consider undertaking the same process in developing the code of practice? I think that there is widespread expertise out there and in the House that will aid in getting that right and in ensuring that improvements occur across the board.

David Blunkett: I am very happy to draw on expertise and experience in terms of the code. It would be right to do so. The difficulty that we have—we should be honest about it—is that we swing like a pendulum from one extreme to the other. A terrible incident occurs and people want to ensure that the maximum information is shared and is available. The next moment, there is real fear of intrusion into people's lives and danger of damaging the privacy of individuals and risking their exposure. Getting this right means having a code of practice that, in the cold of light of day, balances those two opposites.

Vera Baird: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his speedy action in appointing Sir Michael and on his firm decision taking on receipt of the report. However, it is no wonder that the conviction rate for serious sexual offences is only 5.7 per cent. of complaints, as is clear when one looks at the catalogue of sexual complaints made by young women against the same person which are not investigated and prosecuted to court by this one police force to which we have been referring. Steps have been taken since the nineties that should make the investigation of sexual offences better, but will my right hon. Friend ask the police inspectorate to look most carefully into and report on the way in which those incidents were investigated, so that we may be sure that we learn the lessons of all the Soham-related failures?

David Blunkett: My hon. and learned Friend raises much wider issues. In the case of Ian Huntley, the incidents were reported. As the shadow Home Secretary indicated, they were known about, but they were not collated, no relationships were established and they were not held on the database and therefore not drawn on and acted on. I agree entirely that there needs to be a system, as the report recommends, that joins up not only what is found by social services, but what is referred by other agencies or individuals, and that deals with how that information is collated and held; in which circumstances it is deleted; and, above all, how one incident can be put together with another to build up a case and a picture of behaviour that allows us to intervene to save others from being sexually molested. That is what went so sadly amiss in the Huntley case.

Ann Cryer: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, owing to recent police and criminal evidence legislation, both the Crown Prosecution Service and the police can now, in certain circumstances, accept hearsay evidence from parents regarding under-age sex? This is playing an important part in my constituency as far as Operation Parsonage is concerned. If the legislation had been in place earlier, it might have helped the police in relation to Huntley.

David Blunkett: The Criminal Justice Act 2003 permits the use of such evidence in circumstances in which the young person themselves, while having given details and evidence, is not prepared to do so in court. That measure will be of assistance if it is sensitively applied, with the checks that Parliament rightly built in on the use of such evidence, including in writing.

Helen Jones: I welcome the speedy action that my right hon. Friend has taken following the publication of the report, and especially what he has said about the need for someone on each interviewing panel to be trained in the protection of children, since there would be no use in having the best system in the world if those on the ground were not trained to operate it. From his discussions with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, can he tell the House how quickly he thinks such a system of training can be put in place? Does he envisage joint training for those in education, social services and the police so that everyone is working to the same agenda and on the same priorities?

David Blunkett: The Minister for Children is determined to move as quickly as possible, but we have to bear it in mind that in preparing lead governors in 24,000 schools, with the necessary consultation with all the elements of the education service and training providers, will take a little while. We need to find a way of identifying those at a local level who are available and will be in a position to provide such light-touch training very quickly, so that we can draw on the expertise that exists. My right hon. Friends will be examining that matter. The last thing that we want is to set up some tremendous bureaucratic system that would take years to implement and would probably be out of date by the time people accessed it.

Food in Schools

David Kidney: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require all schools in England to have a food policy; to provide support for schools in drawing up, implementing and developing food policies; to make permanent the scheme for free fruit in schools and to extend it; to extend entitlement to free school meals, including to breakfasts; to amend the law relating to the nutritional values of school meals; and for connected purposes.
	I expect that, before the mass production of motor cars and television sets, most people took regular exercise, and those who could afford to do so enjoyed a balanced diet. Today, cars and TV, whatever their benefits, play their part in stoking up obesity on a scale that has not been seen before. According to news reports, the Health Committee, the Consumers Association and the chief medical officer, we are witnessing a mass outbreak of obesity.
	Populating our streets with overweight individuals is not only an aesthetic disaster; obesity is a major risk factor for serious, life-threatening conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Individuals will die younger and society will pay more for the extra demands on our national health service. The antidote to that threat, which the CMO has described as a "health time bomb", remains the same prescription as before—regular exercise and a balanced diet.
	My Bill focuses on diet. If we can instil healthy eating habits in young people while they are young, there is a good chance that those good habits will stay with them for life. Better still, if schools involve their students' parents in the enterprise, schools and parents in partnership will mutually reinforce the same messages on diet.
	Many positive initiatives have been taken in schools in recent years. Labour has reintroduced compulsory nutritional standards for school lunches—a previous Government abolished such standards in 1980. All pupils aged five, six and seven now get free fruit in school, a wonderful development that makes fruit a popular choice among children. The Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health have worked together on trialling a new national healthy schools standard. I want to go further, not towards a nanny state where the Government know best and tell people what they can and cannot eat, but towards empowering people to make the right choices for themselves. For that, we all need relevant information and the understanding to make our own judgments.
	My Bill has five components. First, every school should have a food policy. For example, I want schools to decide the extent of formal teaching about balanced diets and safe levels of salt, fat and sugar. I should like students to learn from their experiences that a healthy diet can be fun. Food consumed in schools includes school lunches, the contents of lunchboxes brought from home and commercial products purchased from vending machines—schools should examine the contents of those vending machines. Some products are fine, but others are junk food and fizzy drinks. School governors should decide whether the extra income for the school is worth the possible harm to our children's health. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) is taking on the related issue of food and drink advertising that aims a hard sell at our children.
	Children should be equipped with basic food skills, so that they can prepare healthy, safe meals, know how food is produced and marketed, and understand what labels mean. I saw a good example of a whole-school approach to learning about food at Silkmore primary school in Stafford, which held a week of lessons and activities on the theme of food. Students themselves think that those matters are important. When I met the members of the school council at Stafford's Weston Road high school last Friday, they told me, unprompted, of their plan to reduce sales outlets for fizzy drinks and increase access to drinking water.
	Of course, school communities, including unpaid school governors, are already very busy, and I do not want to add new burdens. My second provision is that the Government and local education authorities must support schools in developing food policies and making them effective. I discussed that point with Melanie Swanwick, the head of Staffordshire's successful school meals service. She has sufficient confidence in the quality of meals in Staffordshire's schools to suggest that Ofsted inspections should extend to schools' food policies. That is why I asked at the last Education Question Time for Ofsted to be involved in policing minimum nutritional standards set by the Government.
	My third proposal concerns the entitlement to free school meals. According to the Local Authority Caterers Association, school meals are big business. In England alone, 3.25 million meals are served to pupils every day, 100,000 people are employed in the industry, and total expenditure by parents and LEAs is nearly £1 billion a year. In secondary schools in England, one in seven pupils is eligible for free school meals, but one quarter of those pupils do not receive their entitlement. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) made constructive suggestions to improve that situation in her Adjournment debate on 4 February 2004.
	My suggestion in this Bill is to extend the eligibility for free school lunches to include free school breakfasts. Just less than half of secondary schools now offer school breakfasts, and I argue that it is equitable that the existing free school meals scheme should cover school breakfasts in the same way in which it covers school lunches. In Hull, the LEA plans to pilot a scheme to offer all primary school pupils free school lunches in an effort to link education and health. That experiment is interesting, and the future evaluation of its effects on health and learning should be studied closely.
	My fourth idea highlights the success of the free fruit scheme for all five, six and seven-year-old pupils, which is already popular in primary schools. Last Friday, I visited St. Patrick's Roman Catholic primary school in Stafford, where the school meals staff told me that the scheme is changing attitudes, because pupils increasingly choose fresh fruit and raw vegetables with their school lunches. The current scheme excludes LEAs' stand-alone nurseries, and I would rectify that omission.
	My fifth and final proposal is to raise the nutritional standards of school meals. The Government have restored minimum nutritional standards, but many children's meals still read like fast food menus and include few fruits and vegetables. Children should have a choice of healthy meals in an environment that makes healthy choices enjoyable. We should adopt the nutrient-based standards, which experts still recommend, in the 1999 Education and Employment Committee report. I also hope that a greater emphasis on fresh foods will benefit local farmers, who can best supply freshness while keeping food miles low.
	My Bill is well timed. Last month, the Government closed their consultation, "Choosing Health?", on action to improve people's health. As part of that consultation, the public were asked what key actions are needed to help people maintain a healthy weight. What better place to start than in schools? Let us educate young people about food quality, a balanced diet and health consequences. We must act to get young people into the habit of eating a balanced diet and finding out that it is enjoyable. Through schools, we can also engage pupils' parents in that aspect of their children's education. By doing so, we may encourage more families to reinforce at home the positive messages given in school.
	Shakespeare scholars may recall Julius Caesar's line:
	"Let me have men about me that are fat".
	Today, I call for the opposite: with apologies to the Bard's fans for my poor imitation of his prose, let me have people about me whose bellies hang not over their waistbands; exercise and balanced diet will keep them more years from grim reaper's hands. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Kidney, Mrs. Janet Dean, Ms Julia Drown, Dr. Ian Gibson, Helen Jones, Mr. Stephen McCabe, Laura Moffatt, Mr. Kevin McNamara, Linda Perham, Bob Russell, Ms Joan Walley and David Wright.

Food in Schools

Mr. Kidney accordingly presented a Bill to require all schools in England to have a food policy; to provide support for schools in drawing up, implementing and developing food policies; to make permanent the scheme for free fruit in schools and to extend it; to extend entitlement to free school meals, including to breakfasts; to amend the law relating to the nutritional values of school meals; and for connected purpose: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 16 July, and to be printed [Bill 122].

Opposition Day
	 — 
	[13th Allotted Day]

Electoral System

[Relevant document: The Seventh Report from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee, Session 2003–04, HC 400-I, on Postal Voting.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now come to the first debate on an Opposition motion. Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. There will be a 12-minute limit on speeches by Back Benchers.

Alan Duncan: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the constitutional importance of the forthcoming referendums on the Government's proposed regional assemblies; expresses grave concern at the threat to the integrity of the British electoral system through the Government's ill-conceived widespread extension of exclusively all-postal voting in the recent elections against the advice of the Electoral Commission and in the face of opposition from across the political spectrum; notes the public concern over reported instances of fraud, corruption and electoral malpractice; believes that the fragmentation of voting systems and methods under this Government is confusing and off-putting to the electorate; expresses concern that the integrity of the electoral roll is becoming undermined; and calls on the Government to restore a person's right to vote in a secret ballot at a polling station should they so choose.
	All hon. Members have confidence in the process whereby we have arrived here. I hope that we all appreciate and believe that faith in any system of election is essential for the proper working of democracy. Conservative Members feel ever more strongly that the process whereby representatives in this country are being chosen is becoming contaminated by excessive upheaval, irresponsible experimentation and tinkering for its own sake.
	Government by upheaval is the hallmark of new Labour's approach to almost every aspect of constitutional change. The Government invariably end up making a mess of things, wishing they had never started but not being prepared to admit that they have made a complete Horlicks of it. A system that, until recently, enjoyed the unquestioning trust of all its participants, be they voters or candidates, has become open to abuse and unfathomably complicated and has lost the universal trust of those that it serves. The debate that we must hold is neither party political nor trivial. It addresses a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy on which the structure of government at all levels relies.
	In the election 12 days ago, all-postal voting, which was forced on people, attracted widespread disdain and derision. Far from being a long-term solution to democratic participation, it has sown additional seeds of political disaffection among the electorate.

David Taylor: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the depth of disdain and derision was so shallow in the east midlands that turnout in the European elections doubled relative to those in 1999? How does he account for that?

Alan Duncan: The hon. Gentleman should go back to school and study statistics because there is no point in comparisons unless one compares like with like. The experiment in all-postal voting has become a thoroughly counter-productive exercise, which, in the long-term, will be a cause of political alienation, not a solution to it.
	I am well aware of the Government's opinion of the merits of increased turnout, but turnout is the altar at which they worship to the apparent exclusion of any other standard of measuring a voting system's effectiveness. Falling turnout is but one factor in a more deeply rooted trend away from mainstream political involvement, but the Government have resorted to a simplistic approach to a complicated issue.

Andrew Robathan: Does my hon. Friend know that more than 1 million people in this country claim to have two addresses and that the Government showed in a written answer to me that they have no idea of the number of people who are registered in more than one place? I suspect that almost all Members of Parliament are registered in London and in their constituencies. Postal voting greatly exacerbates a small problem. What am I to do with the two extra ballot papers that I am holding? I got postal votes in London and the east midlands and I could easily have voted in both places because there was no mechanism to show that I had cast my European vote in London, where I was voting in the mayoral elections.

Alan Duncan: I saw the Minister's answer to my hon. Friend's question and my hon. Friend has a valid point, which I shall tackle in more detail shortly. It is becoming increasingly clear to anyone who stops to think about it that the disadvantages of malpractice and disaffection more than offset any marginal increase in turnout in all-postal-voting areas.

Joyce Quin: A moment ago, the hon. Gentleman said that we should compare like with like. In my local authority area, we have had three successive years of all-postal voting without any problems. The only difficulties arose with delays and the introduction of unhelpful obstacles, such as the witness requirement, which was introduced this time and led to reduced turnout. When comparing like with like, it is surely effrontery for the hon. Gentleman to castigate the Government when the cynical delaying tactics in the House and in the other place and the introduction of bureaucratic obstacles that had not been in place previously in my area caused the problems.

Alan Duncan: Gateshead experimented with all-postal votes early. Subsequent experiments show that turnout has decreased comparatively. The right hon. Lady has experienced no end of problems in her seat and I shall deal with them shortly. I want to tackle all such matters because the disillusion and confusion that now attaches to voting methods, systems and rules and the composition of the electoral roll are becoming a serious cancer in the body politic. They are switching people off.
	The Minister's previous complacency should be replaced by a sense of contrition and an admission of concern. It will not do for him to intone his earlier answers to questions put to him before the elections. He simply assured us then that everything was running smoothly and that all-postal voting was a triumph for democracy. Clearly, in the eyes of most voters, it was not. To be satisfied that all is well in the voting world, the Minister must establish the extent to which voter participation has permanently increased, ensure that there is no extra scope for corruption or cause for discontent and that the foundation of the entire edifice—the electoral roll—is a pure and perfect construct. He cannot do that.

Douglas Hogg: My hon. Friend has drawn attention to two disadvantages but there is another. People have to vote early in a postal ballot and therefore might not be affected by events during the campaign. Let us consider the Spanish election. Although one might regret the action of the Spanish electorate, the fact that they could take action as a result of something that happened during the campaign is surely part of democracy.

Alan Duncan: My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. One of the problems of all-postal voting is that it destroys the process of any genuine election campaign and puts an end to polling day as judgment day in our British democracy.

Andrew Bennett: It is a mistake to make a fuss about all-postal voting. The hon. Gentleman should examine postal voting in principle. Perhaps he could remind hon. Members that the Conservative Government extended postal voting to holidays and that neither the Conservative party nor the Liberal party objected when the House extended postal voting on demand to other groups. If there is a problem, it is not all-postal voting but postal voting generally.

Alan Duncan: There is a clear distinction between postal votes that are specifically requested and those that are scattered willy-nilly, as if from the skies, over the entire country. An enforced system of all-postal voting entails a massive conceptual shift in the manner that we manage our elections. Instead of saying that a voter must go to a polling station in person and, from a setting of secrecy, immediately put the ballot paper into a secure box, which goes straight to be counted, or specifically requesting, as the hon. Gentleman described, a postal vote, the whole country now receives a confetti shower of charged, loaded, undetonated ballot papers that are designed to provoke higher returns but are open to all manner of maldistribution and malpractice on the way to being counted. [Interruption.] If the Minister wants to sneer, he should apply some basic common sense to the way in which a ballot paper goes from A to B to C to D and back to being counted.

Nick Raynsford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Alan Duncan: I should love to.

Nick Raynsford: Why does the hon. Gentleman believe that the Electoral Commission recommended, in its evaluation of the 2003 pilots, that we should move towards a presumption in favour of all-postal voting in all local government elections?

Alan Duncan: Again, I shall deal with that point shortly. Frankly, I do not care what the Electoral Commission said. I disagree and believe that experience is showing that the system is open to fraud and that the recent all-postal voting experiment is a dangerous backward step for democracy. Voters can more easily be impersonated and ballot papers can be intercepted or even bought and sold more easily under the new system. There is no similar scope for illegal practice when one votes in person at a polling station.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Alan Duncan: I shall give way shortly. The Minister uttered one piece of good sense on 27 May when he said:
	"No unexpected issues have been reported to my Department in those parts of the country where voting will occur through conventional means."—[Official Report, 27 May 2004; Vol. 421, c. 1735.]
	Indeed. Voting through conventional means works.

Clive Betts: My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) asked what specific issues of fraud or lack of security applied to an all-postal ballot as opposed to postal voting in general in an ordinary election. The hon. Gentleman replied with a general diatribe. Will he revert to the question and state what specific problem of fraud or lack of security applies to an all-postal ballot but would not apply to postal voting in a normal election?

Alan Duncan: In a nutshell, when a postal vote is specifically requested, it goes directly to an individual person who wishes to participate in the ballot. That is not the case in all-postal ballots. Indeed, scattering ballot papers all over the place is a process that is almost impossible to police. One person found that their vote was up for auction on the eBay website—[Interruption.] It may be illegal, but that is just the visible malpractice. There has been talk of children selling ballot papers in return for a packet of cigarettes, and of people selling a whole batch of ballot papers for a fiver. At this rate, we will soon have a futures market in ballot papers, or a swaps market. Move over, stock exchange; soon, we will have a vote exchange. David Dimbleby's election reports will have to take on a new guise. He will be telling us: "Voting prices have collapsed today in a Blair market." Or perhaps the Prime Minister will only be happy when they are selling short.

Christopher Leslie: The hon. Gentleman is making some very strong comments. He has made these allegations, but has he reported this information to the police?

Alan Duncan: The whole point is that these practices are almost undetectable, but they destroy confidence. Let us consider the basic administrative problems—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I want to hear less shouting from a sedentary position. One or two hon. Members should know from their own experience of chairing that they should not be engaging in that practice.

Alan Duncan: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Shouting abuse is the only argument that they have.
	Even before there was any suggestion of illegitimate practice, the simple administrative problems were enormous. Printing and distribution was a nightmare. Many ballot papers were delivered late and not printed properly. Barcodes did not work. Ballot papers arrived behind schedule. Emergency polling booths had to be opened in Bolton, for instance, after 6,000 ballot papers were never delivered, which I suppose gives another meaning to the name "Bolton Wanderers". In Gateshead, the constituency of the right hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Joyce Quin), they had to put collection boxes in the town's 18 libraries because ballot papers were delivered late. More than 1,000 voters in Wigan had to go to the town hall after another distribution blunder. I suppose those ballot papers just went over the end of the pier.
	Instructions were not clear, and there was massive confusion about which bits to put into which envelope. To split or not to split: that was the question. It was a sort of nationwide test in origami. Some packs were missing either envelopes or ballot papers. Some people received two EU ballot papers and no local one, while others received two local ones, and none for the European election. Some ballot papers got ripped in half during the count, or on opening, and the system was totally bemusing to blind people.

Nick Raynsford: indicated dissent.

Alan Duncan: The Minister shakes his head, but the Royal National Institute for the Blind has cautioned, in a mood of some justified indignation, that many blind and partially-sighted voters were offered no provision whatever to assist their impairment. That was entirely the fault of the Government, and nothing whatever to do with the returning officer.
	There was also a widespread problem involving the duplication of mailing lists, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) has pointed out. New all-postal and existing postal lists were in some cases not scanned for duplicate distribution, so both sets were sent out. Some people were simply caught in a downpour of ballot papers, all addressed to them. In one case that has come to my attention, someone received four, which I have here. Here is one; here is another; here is a third; and, rather like on "Blue Peter", here is one I prepared earlier. With a bit more sticky-backed plastic, we could pretty well take over the whole country.
	Returning officers up and down the country despaired at the process. Frankly, in the circumstances, they have all done remarkably well. They are to be congratulated for making the best of a bad job, but let us not pretend for a moment that they would ever embark on the same exercise again with any enthusiasm. They would not. Let us be absolutely clear whose fault this was. The Select Committee that looked into this issue just as the Government were bulldozing everything through Parliament, against the wishes of the upper House and the Electoral Commission, said that it was
	"concerned by the Government's poor management of the arrangements for the pilots".
	It had good cause to be so.

David Taylor: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that the litany of problems that he is describing was not at all evident in any part of the region that he and I partially represent, the east midlands, not least because there were few local elections? Is not the main problem the shortness of time that was available because of his colleagues in the other place delaying the legislation?

Alan Duncan: That is not the reason at all. If the hon. Gentleman is in touch with his constituents, as I know that he is, he will have come across the widespread discontent of people being forced to vote by post.

Patrick McLoughlin: It really is nonsense for the Government—or even their Back Benchers—to blame the lateness of the determination of the Commons and the Lords on the Bill in question. We have known since before Christmas that the Government were going to combine the two elections. They had plenty of time in the parliamentary timetable to allow these things to be arranged. It was the Government leaving the legislation late because they could not make up their mind that led to this problem; it was nothing to do with the Lords and the Commons.

Alan Duncan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government also refused to accept the clear advice of the Electoral Commission on this matter, and proceeded in defiance of it.
	Another aspect of the current voting system that is becoming a massive turn-off for anyone contemplating doing their bit at the polls is that, quite simply, it is all becoming too complicated, and people are getting fed up with the way it works. They almost need a PhD in political science to get to grips with all the different systems of voting, counting, and casting their vote. Voters cannot be expected to know their STV from their SV from their FPTP, and they are becoming increasingly confused about their preferences.
	One of merits of the traditional British electoral system has been its simplicity and transparency, yet the proliferation of voting systems and voting methods under this Government has become a voter's nightmare. It risks hindering, not helping, democratic participation. Let us take the London elections. The public faced the confusing prospect of casting five different votes under three different voting systems: one vote for a regional party list in the European elections; two votes for the Assembly via the additional member system; and two preferences for Mayor via the supplementary vote, an electoral system so obscure that it is only otherwise used in Sri Lanka. It is no wonder that, in the Assembly elections, a worrying 6 per cent. of all constituency votes were rejected, as were 3 per cent. of all list votes.
	In the vote for the Mayor, 60,000 voters had their first preference rejected, and while some people admittedly would have chosen not to express a second preference, 330,000 second preference votes were still labelled as rejected. Yet, lo and behold, here is another fiddle: those rejected votes were all counted towards the overall level of turnout. This creative counting gives a profoundly misleading impression about the real levels of democratic participation, and is yet another sign of the spin behind the arguments.

Claire Ward: Surely it is part of anyone's democratic right to go along to the polling station and to participate by spoiling their ballot paper, if they wish. That is democracy, and those votes should be counted towards the turnout level because those people have participated. They may not have voted for the hon. Gentleman's party or for mine, but they have still participated.

Alan Duncan: One of the problems is that many people could not go along to a polling station, although they could in London. No doubt, if people scribbled "I hate Claire Ward" all over their ballot paper, they would know that they were registering a protest and that their vote would be rejected. However, it is clear from the process that we saw 12 days ago that many people simply did not understand the system and did not register a proper vote.
	One of the main advantages of the first-past-the-post system is that it is clean and simple. People understand it, they trust it and they accept it. Perhaps that is why it is the world's most widely used system. But now, with all this variety, people often do not understand the system, and do not trust it. We seriously risk them eventually not accepting its results.

Clive Betts: I actually agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about first past the post, but would he accept that one of the biggest causes of confusion in the all-postal ballots, certainly in my constituency, was the requirement for a witness statement that was imposed on the process by the Tories and the Liberals in the House of Lords at the last minute, against the advice of the Electoral Commission, which said that it would add nothing to voting security?

Alan Duncan: When there is so much scope for fraud already, removing the requirement to have a witness statement would merely compound that problem and lead to an even greater lack of confidence in the system that the Government have forced on the British people.
	The greatest problem with all-postal ballots lies in the loss of confidence caused by the massive scope that exists for electoral malpractice. Under the traditional system, there was perhaps a minor chance that someone would be able to impersonate someone else, and exercise another person's right to vote. Under all-postal voting, there is massive scope for fraud and undue influence. It is, at every turn, open to fiddles. So much can go amiss between the ballot paper being sent out by the returning officer and it coming back to him. Votes can be gathered up when lying on the doorstep or in flats. They can be pinched, transferred, chucked over a hedge or fished out of dustbins.

Andrew Bennett: If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about the postal vote issue, what recommendations will he give to Tory candidates in the next general election? Will he recommend that they should encourage people to have postal votes, or, given his concern about possible fraud, will he recommend that they have nothing to do with encouraging the electorate to have postal votes?

Alan Duncan: It is a matter of choice. People should be able to ask for a postal vote, but it should not be universally forced on them and sent to them out of the sky.

Andrew Robathan: While my hon. Friend is talking about choice, one thing that seems to be ignored, particularly on the Labour Benches, is that many couples do not vote in the same way. We hear a lot about domestic violence, and many women do not wish their husbands to know which way they vote. When it comes to a postal vote, however, they are of necessity likely to cast their vote in the presence of their husband. That is something about which many women feel strongly, and which they do not wish to do.

Alan Duncan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, there have been fairly widespread reports of household intimidation. There can be intimidation in households and in the workplace, as was reported in Bradford. The Minister may want to speak to someone on his Benches who has often been brave on this matter. The hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) has argued that voters can be subjected to what she calls, delicately and politely, "community pressure". I suggest that he looks behind him instead of barracking the Opposition about the dangers that can be involved in the system.
	Then there is the so-called harvesting of votes, with party activists pressuring people on the doorstep to hand over their vote—a practice recklessly encouraged by the Labour party in its official postal voting guide and document, the Labour party postal vote handbook 2004, with its sinister advice to
	"have a ballot box for people to put their votes in which you can then deliver . . . if your volunteers are wearing Labour stickers or rosettes it is unlikely that supporters of other parties will give you their votes."
	If there is many a slip twixt cup and lip, it takes only the Labour party to turn it into an art form. In the face of that, our position is clear—no one should be forced to vote by post.
	No doubt, in response to all this, the Minister will simply say that we should await the inquiry due to be undertaken by the Electoral Commission. I can just see the Minister sitting there satisfied already that he will be able to stand up in a couple of months and assert to the House that there have been few if any proven cases of malpractice. The Minister seems to share that view. That, if I may say so, is exactly the problem.
	The whole point about the malpractice that can so obviously take place in an all-postal ballot is that it is almost impossible to detect, and even more so to prove. People are not stupid. They can see it, and they do not like what they see. They suspect that many elements of the process are like a series of unreported crimes—we know that they are happening, but there is no chance of prosecution, so why bother reporting them. But it undermines their confidence. People will be utterly incredulous about the Government's absurd assertion in their amendment to today's motion that
	"there is currently no evidence to show that all-postal ballots are more susceptible to fraud than traditional elections".
	The Minister says that that is correct. Even someone with limited common sense, or a five-year-old, can work out that they are most definitely susceptible. There are probably a few five-year-olds who have doubled their pocket money proving it. All that matters for the system to be undermined, and for people to lose confidence in it, is that all these abuses are able to take place. One would think that a Government who bang on about perception would have worked that out.
	If the Minister announces to the House in the autumn that the Electoral Commission has found no systematic evidence of malpractice, that is no defence whatever of a system that is so obviously open to it. It is not even as if the Electoral Commission has been at all in evidence walking the streets of Britain over the last few weeks to see things for itself. It is not in any way equipped to conduct such an inquiry.
	The Government cannot get away with just bleating on about turnout. Even the headline figure is not what it seems to be. In the past, the number of rejected ballot papers has been so insignificant that it has hardly mattered. But when it reaches the level of say, 1 per cent. or 2 per cent., it begins to matter. That is not just because it might be thought to have an effect on the result of marginal contests, but because when subtracted from apparent total turnout, it shows that increased participation is not quite what is claimed. [Interruption.] The Minister says that that is nonsense, but it is basic arithmetic. No one is therefore surprised that the Government have insisted on including rejected ballot papers in the turnout figure. It makes the increase in all-postal areas look bigger than it really is.
	We cannot concur with the rosy ministerial statement issued yesterday proclaiming that what the Government call the "multichannel approach" is a "positive result" for "electoral modernisation". The fact that all-postal voting leads to more votes in the ballot box is not in dispute. The key test is whether the integrity of the electoral system is compromised as a result. The Government's claims of doubling turnout, as one Member mentioned, are a statistical sleight of hand. Turnout in the pilot regions was a mere 5 per cent. higher than in non-pilot regions. Turnout rose because the European and local elections occurred on the same day; contests in which all councillors were up for re-election due to boundary changes increased campaign activity; people wanted to protest against the Government's plans for a European superstate; and paradoxically, the controversy about all-postal voting itself gave front-page coverage to what was being dubbed "Super Thursday".
	The Government use the base year of June 1999 to make comparisons, which saw a turnout of just 20 per cent. in the pilot regions. They omit to make comparisons with the last set of local elections, which always have a higher turnout than European ones. Indeed, in areas that have had all-postal local elections for many years, turnout fell. It was down 3 per cent. in Newcastle, 7 per cent. in Sunderland and Gateshead, and 7 per cent. in Trafford.
	The Government point to the anti-fraud measure of witness statements as the cause—some Labour Members even want to abolish it. Yet this fall is a continuation of a long-term trend. As the Electoral Commission reported last year, in its review of 2003 pilots, examining areas that also had all-postal voting in 2002, the novelty value had worn off, and turnout was beginning to decline again. That pattern has continued, it would appear, in the elections that we have just had.
	Let us just imagine the scope that there would be for even greater fraud were there no requirement for some sort of witness statement. Is that really what Ministers would now like to see? Do they wish to abolish the witness statement? I offer them the chance to say so now, at the beginning of the debate.

Nick Raynsford: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the Electoral Commission has recommended that. Does he agree with the Electoral Commission's proposal?

Alan Duncan: I do not agree with the abolition of the witness statement, because there would then be far too much scope for increased malpractice.

Graham Brady: It is important that my hon. Friend should recognise that the Electoral Commission, in accepting that the witness statement could go, also made it clear that the postal ballot should not have been extended as widely as it was without individual voter registration. If Ministers are going to pray in aid the Electoral Commission, they should be honest and straightforward and promise that individual registration will be in place before we ever have another such experiment.

Alan Duncan: My hon. Friend is right, and that is exactly the point that I want to come to. Another ingredient that severely contaminates the dubious process of all-postal ballots is the composition of the electoral roll on which it is based. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe) has become the commander, if I may say so, of that issue. As she pointed out in her debate on 5 May, there are thousands upon thousands of names on the electoral roll of people who are not entitled to vote. In Portsmouth, where the registration process was cleaned up, more than 11,000 ineligible names had to be removed—a whopping 15 per cent. of those on the list. Should my hon. Friend catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, she will be able to elaborate on that. It has severe implications not just for voting but for the setting of constituency boundaries and hence the very composition of this House.
	With all-postal voting, we start with a highly questionable list, especially for those student flats and homes of multiple occupancy in which the risk of malpractice is at its worst, and we compound that situation by bombarding all those electors—and, it would seem, non-electors—with ballot papers. Unless all that is addressed, perhaps by the individual registration for which my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) called, and unless that happens quickly, people will feel that the entire process has become rotten.
	The Government's reckless fiddling with the electoral system has raised widespread public concern about the integrity of the country's electoral process. The electoral practices of the 18th and early 19th centuries, such as intimidation and fraud, risk becoming the hallmarks of the 21st. The system that we have allowed to emerge needs tightening up, not loosening up.
	We will lead a cross-party campaign in both Houses to challenge the Government's plans to hold the forthcoming regional assembly referendums by a compulsory all-postal ballot system. We will also resist plans to use such ballots in any European referendum or across all local elections. This Government have a clear agenda to throw away the ballot box and force all-postal voting on the British public, irrespective of their wishes. We will protect people's right to vote in person and in secret. They should be able to choose the ballot box over the letter box. We are the defenders of democracy; this Government most clearly are not.

Christopher Leslie: I beg to move, leave out from "House" to end and add
	"recognises that the all-postal pilots in June 2004 were part of a process of testing alternative voting mechanisms for the benefit of making voting easier and more convenient for electors; further recognises that turnout in European elections had fallen to its lowest ever level in 1999 and that all-postal pilots assisted in making the 2004 European election turnout the UK's highest ever; welcomes the fact that voter participation for the European elections in the pilot regions more than doubled in 2004 compared with 1999; believes that allegations of fraud have been reported disproportionately and that there is currently no evidence to show that all-postal ballots are more susceptible to fraud than traditional elections; recognises that further reforms will be necessary to widen participation and engagement in the electoral system; and further believes that the integrity of elections and referendums, including the proposed referendums on elected regional assemblies, is adversely affected by declining turnout which puts in jeopardy the democratic mandate."
	What a pity that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) took such a completely over-the-top attitude. How sad the official Opposition have become that they now resort to this. In its desperation to attack the Government, the Conservative party will try to seize on any story or rumour and, by extrapolating from those anecdotes, spin a yarn that the totality of our institutions and the world is crumbling and being brought to its knees, and that everything is a failure—that everything is wrong and a disaster. That is the myth that they are trying to peddle.
	Both the Tories and, to a certain extent, the Liberal Democrats have systematically and persistently tried to undermine the elections and their outcomes throughout the process. They throw dust in the air to cloud the true picture, and they want to focus on the negative at the expense of anything positive. They deliberately seek to present matters out of perspective.
	Thankfully, the reality is quite different from the Opposition's myths. We have every reason to be proud of our system of governance in this country. Our institutions are strong and improving, and are being reformed. Despite difficulties that occur from time to time, we have a democracy that is successful and leads the world. That is the reality, whatever the Opposition say to undermine it. Yes, there are real issues that need to be addressed, but our electoral administrators and returning officers have done a fantastic job in seeing through a challenging combined European and local election, with new systems in some areas designed to make voting easier and more convenient. That is why we put them in place.
	The European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Act 2004 was passed with the explicit intention of testing out whether different forms of voting could engage a larger number of electors who had not voted in previous elections. It did that. More people took part this time than last time, especially where all-postal voting was tried out.

Andrew Turner: The hon. Gentleman says that the system engaged more electors than before. The question that people are concerned about, however, is whether the people who cast the votes were indeed the electors to whom the voting papers were addressed.

Christopher Leslie: If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence that those who cast the votes were not those people, he should deal with that and pass the information to the relevant authorities. If he is seriously suggesting that the increase in turnout of millions more people was somehow fraudulently arrived at, he is living in a different world and does not have anything to substantiate the comment that he has dreamed up.

David Hamilton: Is the Minister as puzzled as I by the Conservative party's conversion to opposing the present system? Was it not that party that made the proposals for trade union ballots to take place by postal voting systems? I come from a union that had 80 to 90 per cent. of members voting through the ballot box but now has 60 per cent. voting through the postal voting system, with no checks being done. Is that not a U-turn?

Christopher Leslie: Absolutely. The fact is that the Conservative party itself has encouraged people to vote by post, for example on its website, which has various literature about encouraging people to vote. Interestingly, the Association of Electoral Administrators was quite critical of the Conservative party process for garnering postal votes, because it said that they were not returned in time to returning officers. However, we should look at that on another occasion.
	We have been trying to make it easier and more convenient for people to vote—that is the sin of which the Opposition accuse us. Millions more people found postal voting more convenient. Millions who would not go to conventional polling stations preferred to cast their vote by post. That is the truth about the recent elections.

Tim Boswell: On the specific point that the Minister has just raised, my village is approximately 18 miles from the assistance and delivery point—the only one in my local registration district. If there were a blind person in the village who had difficulty using or accessing a template at home, would they have to go to the local delivery point to receive assistance, and could that be seen in any possible way as more convenient than the system that has been replaced?

Christopher Leslie: There was a fail-safe arrangement in place whereby returning officers went to visit anyone who requested assistance, whether because of visual impairment or other disability. The reports that we have received show that that worked for large numbers of people. If the hon. Gentleman's local authority—I think that it is Conservative—had chosen to have more assistance and delivery points than the one that the legislation required, it would have been perfectly free to do so.

Joyce Quin: Was my hon. Friend puzzled, as I was, by the repeated reference of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) to people's being forced to vote by postal ballot? Certainly in my area, in the three years for which we had successful experiments, it was still possible to put a vote in at the civic centre or at a designated location. People were not forced to vote by postal ballot, although most of them welcomed the opportunity to do so.

Christopher Leslie: That is absolutely correct, and my right hon. Friend rightly gets rid of the myth that the ballot box has somehow been abolished. People had the choice to go and use the polling booth in the conventional way at those assistance and delivery points if they so chose. We provided for there to be at least one in every local authority, and most local authorities decided to provide more than that.

Bernard Jenkin: If that really is just a myth got up by the Opposition parties, why did the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) describe the Minister's statement issued yesterday as ludicrous and claim that all-postal pilots led to a "cash-and-carry democracy" in his constituency? Why has the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney) described the statement as nonsense and called for a root-and-branch reform of the system? Why have Labour council leaders up and down the land been voicing concern about the system? Why have 12 of the Minister's colleagues signed early-day motion 1338, which draws attention to the allegations of cheating and stealing votes and calls on the Government to review the system? Are those people all Tory stooges?

Christopher Leslie: The hon. Gentleman will have to talk to whichever hon. Member he sees fit to talk to, but if he has specific evidence—I hope that we conduct our debates in the Chamber on the basis of fact and hard evidence rather than rumour and supposition—he should produce it. He should produce it, furthermore, not just for the House, but for the relevant authorities so that they can investigate it; otherwise, I cannot see the validity of the hon. Gentleman's point.
	The fact remains that, in recent years, people have been less inclined to participate in local elections and if anything damages the integrity of our democracy—partly the long title of today's debate—it is the problem of dwindling involvement, minority participation, and the consequent weakening of the mandates of those elected supposedly to "represent" the public in taking decisions. How, then, should we respond to that particular problem? Should we simply ignore it and hope that it goes away—that seems to be the approach of Conservative Members—or should we try to look for ideas and solutions to see whether we can re-engage people in a way that removes barriers and obstacles to their participation? That is exactly what we have tried to do.
	The Government and this Parliament have been keen to try out new ideas, to test new ways of raising interest and involvement in democracy and elections. Not everything is the fault of the mechanisms of the electoral system, but it would surely be foolish not to look to see whether improvements might make some difference.

Douglas Hogg: It is obviously a legitimate aspiration of the Government to drive up voting. That is correct and I agree with it. At the same time, however, it is important that people perceive the result of an election to be fair. There is a widespread view, held in most parts of the country, that the possibilities for fraud are so great as to undermine the outcome of many of the ballots.

Christopher Leslie: The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about a perception, which has been perpetuated by his Front-Bench colleagues, but I believe that it is indeed a perception rather than a true depiction of the reality of the position. I am glad that he accepts that it is right to explore different voting methods and technologies. We should be looking into whether it is possible to give electors the choice and convenience in voting that they would expect from other activities such as shopping or banking.

Claire Ward: I believe that my hon. Friend is right to pursue as many alternatives as possible to encourage voter participation. Four years ago in Watford, there was a pilot scheme whereby people voted for a whole weekend. Our elections were held over three days with postal and ballot boxes being placed in supermarkets. Our turnout actually fell as a result, but it has not discouraged me from looking to find other ways of increasing participation. It is clear that postal ballots help to achieve that, so I hope that my hon. Friend will continue to pursue the option of all-postal ballots.

Christopher Leslie: It is most gratifying to see that my hon. Friend has an open mind to try to find new ways of engaging with her constituents and to make voting easier and more convenient. The fact that some Conservative Members are circling to pounce at any opportunity on a pilot scheme whose outcome they do not like is most disappointing. It is right to test these options out; they were pilots, after all, and we learn lessons from them. We must also ensure that the pilots are as secure as possible and that we put extra security safeguards into pilots and trials, as we have every time that we have tested these initiatives out.

Bill Tynan: My hon. Friend will be aware that in Scotland we would have been delighted to have an all-postal vote in the European elections. Does he share my concern that the allegations made that huge swaths of the population are dishonest when it comes to voting are a serious matter? If the Opposition could substantiate those allegations, I would like to hear that substantiation.

Christopher Leslie: Quite right. The question of fraud and malpractice has not only excited the Opposition, but garnered many column inches in the press. However, I do not believe that the allegations have been fully scrutinised to assess whether they stand up, so I welcome the opportunity once and for all to deal with this important issue. The various media reports of a small number of voters being bullied or put under duress to cast their ballot continued throughout the last week of the election. It is vital for elections both to be secure and to be seen to be secure, and for any evidence of malpractice to be reported to the police straight away.
	As I said earlier, if the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton has any evidence of wrongdoing, I hope that he will produce that information and ensure that it is taken to the relevant authorities immediately. However, I have to say that, contrary to many of the reports that he and the media have perpetuated, the regional returning officers—the true experts in the field—to whom I have spoken have not reported any greater incidence of fraud or malpractice than that which typically occurs in every election campaign. They reported negligible local difficulties, and they doubted very much that any substantial problems were sufficient to jeopardise the elections.
	The only reports that I have of actual arrests are of three individuals in Oldham, with no arrests reported by regional returning officers elsewhere in the north-west, in Yorkshire and the Humber, in the east midlands, or in the north-east. It is regrettable that hearsay and rumour created misconceptions about the all-postal pilots, when the reality is that they do not appear to have generated anything other than the normal level of charges or prosecutions typical to all elections. To quote a joint statement by the north-west regional returning officer, Sir Howard Bernstein, and the Greater Manchester Police:
	"Our research shows that in Greater Manchester, the scale of allegations of fraud and malpractice is broadly similar to previous years. While the nature of allegations has changed this year, the scale has not increased—if anything, it has lessened."
	Much has been made of technical difficulties experienced within some pilot local authorities.

Graham Brady: Before the Minister moves on, I am pleased to hear that he accepts that it is essential to make improvements to ensure security, so will he give an undertaking now that individual voter registration will be put in place, as recommended both by the Electoral Commission and the Select Committee in its May report, before any further all-postal votes take place?

Christopher Leslie: Unlike the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton, I do care what the Electoral Commission says and I believe that it is important for us to listen to it. Ultimately, it advises and we take the decisions. The hon. Gentleman also has the right not to listen to its advice. Currently, the Electoral Commission advises that it prefers individual registration and we are certainly minded to continue to reflect on that advice. Bringing that about would require a change in the law. The Electoral Commission also recommends that, on the next occasion, it wants all-postal referendums and we will be in discussion over the coming months about that.

Andrew Miller: I am pleased that my hon. Friend picked up on the comments of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan). Did he note that the hon. Gentleman said that he did not care what the Electoral Commission said, but then, on at least three occasions, he prayed in aid what he alleged the Commission did say?

Christopher Leslie: My hon. Friend is looking for consistency from the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton, but his expectations are set a little too high in that respect.
	I made it clear when I gave a statement to the House on 27 May that, although problems and delays were encountered in some of the technical preparation for the ballot process, proper contingency measures were put in place and the elections continued to run successfully. Despite some of the more lurid headlines that were printed, of the 14.1 million ballot packs, more than 99 per cent. were issued by returning officers by the deadline of midnight on 1 June. The few remaining packs were issued by 5.10 the following morning. Royal Mail treated them as if they had been received at midnight. It provided an outstanding service in supporting the administrators and suppliers and ensuring that their role in the process was delivered effectively. That is a tribute to the hard work of returning officers, suppliers and the Royal Mail, each of whom showed dedication and adaptability in overcoming the difficulties that were experienced. It also shows that the allegations of "chaos" and "shambles" levelled at the returning officers were severely overblown.

Bernard Jenkin: May I return the hon. Gentleman to the possibility of all-postal referendums? We know of the Government's intentions for the regional referendums in the autumn, but will the Minister give an assurance that there is no question of holding the referendum on the European constitution by all-postal ballots? Will that be conducted through the ballot box, not the letterbox?

Christopher Leslie: Any decisions about future referendums must be taken on a case-by-case basis. I am certainly not going to box in at this stage how such referendums should take place.
	I turn now to the accusations that there was complexity in the voting system. It was alleged that both the all-postal pilots and the combination ballots involved a degree of extra complexity. The evidence of a significant increase in turnout shows that we must keep that in perspective.
	In the pilots, local authorities ran helplines as well as assistance and delivery points to cater for those who needed help. People who wanted to cast their vote in the tradition way at a polling booth were able to do so at one of the ADPs. Returning officers were also able to provide assistance in the home for people with disabilities or visual impairment.
	A great deal of advertising aimed at explaining the elections was also produced, and the Electoral Commission provided assistance on its website and by means of its own helpline. It is clear that support was available for those people who required it.

Mark Francois: In 1999, the turnout in the European elections was higher both in the regions where there was all-postal voting, and where the more traditional system was in operation. That happened not because of the method of voting but because electors had strong views about European matters and therefore wanted to cast a ballot. That was the real driver behind higher turnout under both systems. Following the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) about the referendum on the European constitution, will the Minister accept that the opinion polls are more than two to one against the Government on this matter? If there is any suggestion that the Government are trying to use an electoral device to fiddle the outcome of that referendum, there will be tremendous anger throughout the UK.

Christopher Leslie: I have already answered the latter point. The hon. Gentleman compares the European elections of 1999 and 2004. I know that Opposition Members are devoid of facts, so I shall give them some. In the pilot regions, the 1999 turnout was 20.2 per cent., and in 2004 it was 42.6 per cent. In the non-pilot regions, turnout was 25.9 per cent. in 1999, and 37.2 per cent. in 2004. The figures are clearly higher for both categories, but the rise is lower in the non-pilot regions. The rise is considerably greater in the pilot regions, where there was an appreciable and significant uplift in turnout.
	In the pilot regions, many electors expressed concerns about the witness signature requirement on the declaration of identity form. Both the Government and the Electoral Commission had reservations about that requirement, and I am afraid to say that it was almost certainly a factor in limiting turnout even more. In order to limit the number of votes rejected as a result of incorrectly completed declarations, the pilot schemes required returning officers, where possible, to return wrongly filled out forms to allow them to be corrected. Early indications are that that operation was successful, but of course we await the Electoral Commission's evaluation.

Bernard Jenkin: Will the Minister point out the legislative authority for that operation?

Christopher Leslie: I shall certainly do that. As I understand it, the matter is clearly covered by regulation. If the hon. Gentleman does not have a copy of the relevant regulations, I shall ensure that a copy of them is sent to his office. The proposal always was that returning officers should be able to help make sure that declarations of identity could be returned if they had been completed incorrectly. The same option was included in the guidance that we issued.

Douglas Hogg: The Minister is making it clear that he has doubts about the witness attestation procedure. Does he accept that almost every important document that people have to complete requires a witness attestation? That is true for passport applications, for example, as it is for wills and most credit agreements. The point is that, when a person signs an important document, it is rather important that that person is able to prove his or her identity.

Christopher Leslie: The Electoral Commission has said that better security arrangements can be developed. Opposition Front-Bench Members may not care for what the commission has to say, but the Government intend to follow its advice.

Claire Ward: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Christopher Leslie: I will, but I have just recalled the provision about which the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) inquired. The authority for the action taken by returning officers is given by article 45(1) of the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (All-Postal) Pilot Order 2004. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Claire Ward).

Claire Ward: No doubt my hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that, even in the non-pilot postal areas, people who applied for a postal vote were required to get that witnessed. In Watford, various allegations were made to the effect that, when the envelopes were opened before election day, a number of Liberal Democrat activists were seen to note the details of witnesses' names and addresses. We sought clarification on that matter from the returning officer, who did not seem sure whether that was a breach of the law. Will the Minister ask the Electoral Commission whether it is acceptable for observers to take down details of who has witnessed a person's vote? Surely that cannot be right.

Christopher Leslie: The occurrence reported by my hon. Friend happened in a non-pilot region, but it is important that we look into any worries about the declaration of identity. Those worries have caused the Electoral Commission to be uncertain about continuing with the declaration. The system has been in place since 1918, but the commission believes that better security arrangements are possible.
	The Electoral Commission is due to report on the pilots in September. I have no doubt that its evaluation will be both thorough and balanced, and we look forward to studying it in depth. Lessons learned will be incorporated into the Government's wider plans for electoral modernisation. Those plans include both traditional methods of voting and alternatives such as postal balloting and electronic voting.
	We will continue to find ways of increasing convenience and choice for electors in the future. The next staging post for our electoral system is due this autumn with the referendums on the establishment of elected regional assemblies in the three northern regions of England. Those referendums are clearly different from elections in that there are no candidates, but even so it must be easy and convenient for electors to express their opinion. It remains the intention to hold the referendums on an all-postal basis—something that has previously been welcomed by the Electoral Commission, which for the first time is due to run the administration of these referendums. However, some of the parliamentary regulations and orders relating to the referendums will need to be taken through Parliament in advance of the Electoral Commission's evaluation of all-postal voting. We understand that that may not be available until mid-September.
	We cannot leave the regulations and orders until after that time for the following reasons. First, we gave commitments that there would be a 10-week campaigning period in advance of the referendums. Secondly, before that campaign period, public information literature explaining the referendum process would have to be sent to every household. In practice, that means distributing leaflets over the summer.
	Moreover, delaying the referendum regulation orders until after the commission has reported would prevent us from honouring the commitment to that timetable. It could mean putting the referendums back into the winter months, when campaigning would be more difficult, voters would be less inclined to participate and there could be a clash with the Christmas post, for instance. We will therefore bring the orders before Parliament over the next few weeks, so as to keep to the original timetable. However, given that for the first time the referendums will be run by the Electoral Commission, the orders will rest on the proviso that, if the commission's September evaluation were to conclude that it was unsafe to proceed as planned, we would be prepared to recommend to Parliament amending the approach for these referendums, even though that would almost certainly delay the referendum date.
	I trust that this commitment demonstrates the seriousness with which we take the Electoral Commission's evaluation, but also our hope to keep to the commitments that we gave Parliament during the passage of the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act 2003.
	After the referendums, there will be other local and national elections and by-elections at which we will need to consider employing new voting mechanisms. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which oversees local elections in England and Wales, will continue its policy of innovation to test innovative voting techniques, including telephone voting and electronic voting. The ODPM will work in co-operation with the Electoral Commission.

Bernard Jenkin: The Minister has made a significant announcement. He has acknowledged, implicitly, that there are potential problems with all-postal ballots. It remains to be seen whether the Electoral Commission can be the independent arbiter of those problems, given that it has already succumbed to Government pressure over which regions took part in the pilot. In addition, the Minister has also put in question the whole future of the regional referendums. A large number of Labour Members would like those referendums to be abandoned. What does the Minister have to say to them?

Christopher Leslie: The hon. Gentleman should not get his hopes up too much. We do not see any reason why the elections should be regarded as unsafe, but it would be unreasonable were we to disregard the evaluation by the Electoral Commission. We have to pay respect to the timetable. The commission will report in mid-September. I have given the reasons why we need to proceed with some of the paving regulations and orders at this stage. I have set out our approach in the unlikely eventuality that the Electoral Commission will conclude that it would be unsafe to proceed on an all-postal basis. We do not anticipate that, but I felt that it would be useful to set out our approach to the House.
	For the time being, we can be satisfied that all-postal ballots boosted participation. In the regions where all-postal voting was held—the north-east, east midlands, Yorkshire and the north-west—more than twice as many people voted in the European elections as did in 1999. That was an increase of almost 3 million voters. The non-pilot regions also saw increases in turnout, albeit to a lesser degree. The combined effect meant that more voters participated in the elections to the European Parliament in this country than ever before. While just 24 per cent. of people participated in 1999, this year that figure rose to 38 per cent. That equates to about 6.5 million additional votes.
	So, judged by our goal of raising participation and turnout, we have now proved that all-postal voting on a wider basis is clearly one way of successfully engaging more of the public in our electoral system. With the Electoral Commission advising that all future elections should take place on an all-postal basis, it was surely right to increase the scale on which we tested out the system, and the initiative has proved its worth.
	Tackling low voter turnout is neither easy nor straightforward. The reasons for not voting are complex and varied. I believe that the course that we have struck is the right one. Pilots generate evidence and teach us lessons for the future. Steps are taken to minimise any risks and this year, as previously, things overall have gone well.

David Clelland: My hon. Friend will have heard the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman rubbish the Electoral Commission on the question of extending all-postal votes to local government elections. He derided the Electoral Commission on the question of witness statements. Yet the Opposition motion invites the House to criticise the Government for acting against the advice of the Electoral Commission. Does that not demonstrate the nonsense of the motion and the usual doublespeak of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan)?

Christopher Leslie: I would never accuse the hon. Gentleman directly of hypocrisy, but he has had difficulty with consistency in his arguments. I think that he tripped up about 10 minutes into his speech and fell into saying that he did not really care what the Electoral Commission said. I have a feeling that that quotation will be around his neck for some time.

Alan Duncan: rose—

Christopher Leslie: If the hon. Gentleman would like to elaborate or perhaps dig himself out of that one, I will give him the chance.

Alan Duncan: May I invite the Minister, for the sake of honesty in this debate, to desist from the comparison between absolute turnout this year and absolute turnout four or five years ago? The only statistical comparison that is valid is the differential turnout between areas that were all-postal and those that were not.

Christopher Leslie: Turnout did increase in the non-pilot regions by about 50 per cent; in the pilot regions it rose by more than 100 per cent. That is pretty convincing. All democrats should welcome the improvement in turnout. A derisory turnout, which gives politicians a questionable mandate and means that the views of only a small minority are represented, is surely the greater threat to our electoral system.
	For our part, we will continue to try and find better ways of making it easier for people to vote. That is evidently in contrast to the Opposition parties, who seem devoid of ideas. They offer no solutions or reforms, but they constantly and opportunistically chip away at public confidence in the efforts of others to make improvements. As I said earlier, it is a great pity that, rather than addressing the real issues of reform, they choose to carp and criticise, using abuse of new ideas as a proxy for political attack. The real threat to our electoral system is the constant undermining that comes from the Opposition parties. They are perpetuating the cynicism and corrosiveness within our democracy, and will themselves be the worse for it in the long run.

Paul Tyler: First, I agree with the Minister that the whole House should pay tribute to the returning officers and all those who administered the electoral process for heroically dealing with the most difficult circumstances. That applies not only to the areas where the pilots took place but to all areas.
	I agree with the Minister on another point. There is an urgent need to re-establish the authority and independence of the Electoral Commission. I regret very much the comments made by the Conservative spokesman. We have been consistent in our support of the Electoral Commission and I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to say that they, too, regret the extent to which they have undermined the authority of that independent commission.
	My notes say that I should refer to the written statement from the PUSS at DCAF—I think that that is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Constitutional Affairs—but first and foremost I should say that I regret the extent to which he has overblown his case. A more moderate response in his statement yesterday would have been helpful. His claims were ridiculous and overblown.
	Of course we are all interested in increasing the turnout, and that is not just on party political grounds. When the Bill was being debated, my party was attacked for being against the extension of the pilot to four regions because it was said that the Liberal Democrats thought that it would damage our chances. In those four regions, we did exceptionally well in the local government elections. We achieved spectacular results on 10 June in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Gateshead, Bolton, Sheffield, Rochdale and Newcastle. We also got two additional MEPs. So our opposition was not partisan. My criticisms and comments are on principle.
	I agree with the Minister that worthwhile and important reassessment has to take place of the effect on turnout. I look to the Electoral Commission to analyse the elections carefully. But anyone who pretends that the increase in turnout was solely down to the all-postal pilots is dangerously disingenuous. There were other factors, and the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) has referred to them.
	The Minister spoils his case by referring to the turnout in the terms that he did in his statement. He said that in all four postal regions overall turnout in the European parliamentary elections was more than double that in 1999. That sounds dramatic, but the figure in the pilot regions was 42.6 per cent. and in the non-pilot regions was 37.2 per cent.—a very small margin. It is important that the Minister does not overstate his case before the Electoral Commission has done a proper analysis. We should recognise that those figures are not a ringing endorsement of all-postal voting and that such voting is not a magic wand to reverse the decline in turnout.
	Moreover, the turnout came up from a lower base in the pilot regions presumably because those parts of the country were previously fiefdoms of one-party rule—especially Labour party rule. In safe seats, voters often consider that there is no point in voting. Turnout in those four regions was behind the others in 1999 because there were so many rock solid Labour majorities. That situation has changed. I gave the example of the Liberal Democrat advances. That demonstrates how the situation has changed. Clearly, the persuasive factor is not the method of voting but the impact of voting.
	In the meantime, it is plainly arrogant and ignorant for the Government to ignore the evidence of confusion and potential corruption.

Adrian Bailey: I accept the hon. Gentleman's point that the variation between the turnout in the all-postal areas and the non-all postal areas was not that great, but he has failed to assess correctly the impact of the increased availability of postal votes even in areas where their use was not compulsory. The hon. Gentleman will see that, partly as a result of the publicity given to the experiment and partly due to the increased awareness of the all-party machine, turnout was higher due to an increase in postal voting even in areas where it was not compulsory. So my hon. Friend the Minister's underlying argument about the impact of postal voting still holds firm in spite of the points that the hon. Gentleman made.

Paul Tyler: The hon. Gentleman has almost made his speech, which may be a good way to get in on this debate. I do not want to encourage other hon. Members to make interventions of that length, but it may be the only way. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but the Minister's statement referred to "all-postal pilots". That is the perception. The insistence on compulsory postal voting, the removal of choice and—as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) reminded me—the extent to which it has undermined the secrecy of the ballot are important disadvantages that must be set against the advantage.
	If people think that no serious corruption took place, I draw the House's attention to the comments made by Sir Albert Bore, the Labour leader of Birmingham city council, who warned that the law was not specific enough to tackle postal vote fraud. Of course, Birmingham was not one of the pilot areas, but the Minister will acknowledge that making compulsory a faulty system, which at present applies only to the minority, will make things worse. Sir Albert said:
	"At present, in relation to the handling of postal ballot papers, the law is so general that almost anything is legal."
	The Birmingham Evening Mail reported, on 10 June:
	"City Labour leader Sir Albert Bore today called for a national rethink on postal voting after a candidate was found with a bag of completed ballot papers in a late-night police swoop."
	That followed a high profile incident when a number of Labour candidates and activists in Birmingham were witnessed taking voters' ballot papers out of the party office to a deserted cul-de-sac in an industrial estate near spaghetti junction to "sort them out". If that can happen when postal votes are a minority, imagine what could happen when they are compulsory and 100 per cent. of the votes cast.

Andrew Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman remind us what happened when his party and the Conservatives voted on the extension of postal votes on demand? Did they vote against that?

Paul Tyler: No, we did not. However, we have insisted over recent months that the intention to defraud should be more carefully pinned down. That is why the witness statement has been introduced. I know that the Electoral Commission has some misgivings about it and we must look at the evidence in due course to see how we may improve the integrity of the system.
	A flood of complaints has come in about possible fraud and electoral malpractice from the four regions involved. Of course the Electoral Commission and the police should examine those. It is outrageous to attempt to prejudge their conclusions, as both previous contributors seemed to do, because we should wait and see the facts. However, it would be just as dangerous for the Minister to ignore those allegations as it would for him to accept that they are all likely to be true.
	The Government do not seem to understand the reluctance of many electors to give up completely their right to vote in person, in secrecy and in the polling booth, with only the non-partisan presiding officer in attendance.

Clive Betts: I return the hon. Gentleman to the criticisms he made of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) for not accepting the recommendations of the Electoral Commission. Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that the Electoral Commission said to the Select Committee that it had no more concerns about the security of voting in an all-postal ballot than it did about postal voting on demand. That is the opposite of what he said a few moments ago. Does he agree with the Electoral Commission on that issue or not?

Paul Tyler: I have just said—the hon. Gentleman could not have been listening—that I am prepared to wait to hear what the Electoral Commission says in response to the pilot. The whole point of a pilot is to take advantage of the opportunity to learn the lessons from it. I am prepared to wait for that.
	This is a timely debate, because the threats to the integrity of the electoral system do not solely occur in relation to all-postal ballots. There is also the interesting issue of the publication of opinion polls during the much longer period—in all-postal ballots—in which people are voting. It can be anything up to 15 days, instead of just one. In that time, greater emphasis can be given to the so-called evidence of the polls, and the way in which they are reported. Their value and validity is under scrutiny again, not least because they seem to have been more misleading or more influential than in recent elections.
	In Business questions last week, I mentioned YouGov, but all the pollsters have a responsibility to consider how their results are reported. All the pollsters are undermined by the way in which the media present their findings at the moment. For example, one newspaper reported that YouGov's reputation for accuracy rested in part on its forecast of the outcome of last year's Conservative party leadership contest. Since none took place, I was not persuaded by that argument.
	More seriously, the Evening Standard headlined the Livingstone-Norris contest as being "Neck-and-Neck", when the first round vote showed them to be on 35.7 per cent. and 28.2 per cent. respectively. That is hardly neck-and-neck. It may be that the prominence of that front-page report, from a uniquely well-read paper in London, caused more people to vote to keep the Conservative candidate out. It may well have squeezed the vote of the Liberal Democrat candidate, my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). The evidence of that is that the party vote for the Assembly was rather higher than his vote. Either way, it would be ironic if Mr. Livingstone owed his margin of success to a Conservative newspaper. It was equally ironic that Conservative campaigners used the "Neck-and-Neck" headlines in leaflets, and that may have frightened voters to go the other way.
	Similarly, the substantial haemorrhage of Conservative voters to UKIP could be the direct result of huge coverage of the alleged rise in support for the party, almost certainly over-emphasised by a rogue YouGov poll in—of all papers—The Daily Telegraph. By focusing almost exclusively on the "certain to vote" figures, it forecast on 24 May an 18 per cent. UKIP vote, and then on 29 May an increase to 20 per cent. The actual result, after those misleading boosts to its chances, was of course some 16.1 per cent. I suspect that that will not make The Daily Telegraph very popular with the Conservative leadership.
	Nor will the Standard be top of the Tory pops. Its eve-of-poll report of the YouGov poll put UKIP equal with the Conservatives on 22 per cent. The UKIP press release read:
	"UKIP level with the Tories in last minute poll".
	That very day the Conservatives secured 26.7 per cent., more than 10 per cent. more than UKIP. They were not level at all. Even its exit poll seems to have been wrong.
	In its defence, YouGov has said that the problem is how its reports are reported and that other polls are just as bad. Two wrongs do not make a right. The whole industry must now acknowledge that it is under the spotlight, especially from commercial clients. If YouGov's accuracy on political questions is at fault, commercial clients may also doubt its accuracy.

Bernard Jenkin: Am I really listening to a Liberal Democrat? The hon. Gentleman's party are the past masters at issuing false polls in the run-up to an election in every one I have ever seen them contest. The last-minute leaflet always has a graph showing the Liberal Democrat just about to catch up. Has he changed his mind? Does he agree with me that such leaflets can be unethical?

Paul Tyler: All I am saying—[Laughter.] Well, it is a good crack. However, there is a difference between a so-called reputable public opinion poll and—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear!"] Wait a minute for the punch line. There is a difference if such a poll is published in an allegedly reputable newspaper and that is then repeated in a leaflet, as happened in London. That is a legitimate way to provide information to the public. However, the pollsters have a responsibility for the reporting of their results.
	I shall give another example. The Times is being investigated for having published an opinion poll, purporting to show how people had voted in the all-postal vote regions, before the polls closed. Apparently that is illegal. We must examine how such polls are presented, because they do have an impact. It is important that we consider that issue.
	The pollsters are as much victims as villains in this situation. The main culprits are those in the media who often have their own agenda and choose how to interpret and report poll findings. I am sure that representatives of the Conservative party will have a quiet discussion with The Daily Telegraph on that issue, after the haemorrhage of its vote to UKIP. It is significant that the newspapers that gave most prominence to those misleading figures of support for UKIP were those with a bitterly anti-European, obsessive agenda.

Harry Barnes: On integrity, why did the Liberal Democrat party put out advertisements in the Evening Standard stating that the London mayoral election was neck and neck between Ken Livingstone on 51 per cent. and Simon Hughes on 49 per cent? What was the basis for that information?

Paul Tyler: I have it here—in the Evening Standard report of a poll. I shall give it to the hon. Gentleman later if he wants to see it. If there had been a run-off, that would have been the result—[Interruption.] It was true. Indeed, the results showed that the Conservative candidate could not beat Ken Livingstone but that the Liberal Democrat could. I shall give the hon. Gentleman the report immediately after the debate.

Patrick Cormack: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Paul Tyler: I want to try to make progress, as I am conscious that there will be only limited time for Back Benchers.
	I regret the fact that the Prime Minister indicated last week that he thought these were entirely matters for the parties. I do not think they are matters for the parties and I have said that to the chairman of my party. I do not believe that political parties can deal impartially with such issues. The Electoral Commission should be asked to examine the reliability and influence of reported opinion polls and their potential to undermine the integrity of the electoral process.
	The Electoral Commission is extremely important to the whole subject of the debate. As I said earlier, I regret the attack made on it by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton. It would be folly to ignore the damage to the reputation of the Electoral Commission that the Government's unilateral decision to extend the postal votes pilot has created. I had hoped to hear an unequivocal statement from the Minister that that will not be repeated, and that the Commission's authority will be reinforced.
	It is clearly desirable for the Commission to be permitted to experiment with other pilot projects to increase turnout. If the convenience of the electorate is the sole or main criterion, why not switch one year's poll to a weekend—Saturday or Sunday, or both? As we heard from the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward), it may not be ideal but it should at least be considered. It is helpful to hold different elections on the same day and we supported the Government on that. It is also helpful to hold elections in June rather than in May, due to the interruption in campaigning at Easter and, indeed, the weather earlier in the year. We should look into that.
	It is apparent, however, that the principal motivation for improving turnout is for people to have the perception that their vote will "make a difference". There is a close correlation between what seems to be a foregone conclusion and low turnout.
	Average figures can be misleading. The worst experience in the 2001 general election was in seats that were thought to be so safe that it would not be worth bothering to go to the poll—Liverpool, Riverside being the worst example, with only 34 per cent. voting. On the very same day, however, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) managed to achieve a turnout of 72 per cent., because the result at the previous general election had been very close—the majority was only two—and it was perceived that it might be close again.
	I can offer a personal example. When I was first elected to the House in 1974, my very clever electors in Bodmin knew that the result would be absurdly close and that I would have a majority of only nine, so 83 per cent. of them voted. By 2001, however, in my present seat, the equally clever electorate realised that it would not be quite such a close thing—the majority was well over 9,000—so I am afraid that turnout dropped to 63 per cent.
	First past the post undoubtedly depresses the extent to which most voters in most seats perceive that their vote counts. It does not "make the difference" in most seats. In 2001, only 18 per cent. of those entitled to vote actually affected the outcome. Forty-one per cent. did not vote—in the circumstances, who can blame them?—and another 41 per cent. voted either for losing candidates or for those who had excess votes already and did not need those votes. Only 18 per cent. actually affected the outcome.
	Before anyone tells me that regional lists do not work, I acknowledge immediately that closed regional lists are equally depressing for turnout. They are not the answer, and we are against them, but at least under the closed regional list system for the European Parliament every vote can be of reasonably equal value.
	On the other hand, the single transferable vote system is much more effective on all counts. The Electoral Commission will need to examine carefully the experience of STV in local council elections in Scotland to see whether it would assist in dealing with the turnout problems in other parts of the country. I understand that at least one London council—Lewisham—wanted to run an STV pilot to see if there would be an improvement. Such a pilot would be extremely helpful. Where every vote is seen to count, it makes a difference to people's motivation to turn out, as we saw in the several northern cities to which I referred earlier.
	If the Electoral Commission is to regain its authority, based on a reputation for impartiality and integrity, it must be empowered to examine the defects of the whole electoral system. The Government are about to embark on an internal examination of the various voting systems currently in place—in Scotland and Wales, in London, in Northern Ireland and for the European Parliament. They are also honour-bound to revisit the conclusions and recommendations of the Jenkins commission—a firm manifesto commitment at the last general election.
	It would be an unmitigated disaster if the same partisan approach displayed by the Deputy Prime Minister before the recent elections were allowed to dominate the Government's review. The review must be open and transparent; it must bring in all parties and be completely independent of the Government, avoiding any suggestion of yet more gerrymandering.
	My colleagues and I acknowledge that the Government are in a dilemma in relation to the coming referendums on regional assemblies, although it is a dilemma somewhat of their own making. If they wait for the Electoral Commission to report in September, it may be too late to complete the necessary legislation. Perhaps the commission could be asked to produce preliminary recommendations specifically on the regional assembly referendums. In the absence of such a report, my colleagues and I believe that, at least compared to local government polls, there may be a better, although not a perfect, case for compulsory all-postal voting in those referendums for the following reasons.
	There would be less opportunity and less motivation for fraud, as there would be no individual candidates or over-enthusiastic supporters. The logistics would be more straightforward, with none of the printing, distribution or completion problems of complicated and confusing ballot papers that we experienced on 10 June. As long as we can still provide choice by insisting on enough locations in each area for the delivery of completed ballot papers, there may be a case for the system. I hope that the Minister can reassure us about that at the end of the debate.
	Although it sounds like a maternity unit, the so-called assisted delivery point is extremely important. To have only one in Greenwich is fine, but in North Cornwall, where people might have to travel 40 miles to it, it is impossible. I noted from the evidence of the Electoral Commission and others to the Select Committee report, referred to on the Order Paper, that Government funding for those delivery points may be an important issue.

Bernard Jenkin: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Paul Tyler: I am about to conclude my speech.
	From all I have said, it follows that we believe that the Electoral Commission must play a critical role—the leading role—in bringing together the factual evidence on which the House and the country will take a decision on these important matters. Only then can Ministers repair the damage that they have done over the last few months.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that the 12-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches starts to operate from now.

Roger Godsiff: As has been said, the integrity of the electoral system is an extremely serious issue. I regret the fact that some of the debate has been partisan in tone, because very serious lessons need to be learned from what happened in the last local and European elections. I listened to the Minister's opening remarks, but I should like to share with right hon. and hon. Members the reality of what happened during the recent elections in Birmingham. I suspect that what happened there was replicated in other multicultural inner-city areas.
	I wish to make it perfectly clear that I am not talking all-postal ballots— Birmingham did not have an all-postal ballot—and that I support the Government's efforts to increase turnout and participation in elections. Although turnout increased in the area of inner-city Birmingham that I represent and in surrounding areas, in reality that had very little to do with an increased interest in the local or European elections. I deeply regret to say that the increase occurred because postal voting was turned into a political currency in those areas.
	To give hon. Members an indication of what I am about to say, I shall quote the opening remarks of the front-page editorial in The Birmingham Post, to which my colleague, the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), referred. It was written the day after the election and headed, "Bribes, bullies and ballots". It reads:
	"Those Brummies who could be bothered to participate in yesterday's city council elections should ask themselves a sobering question today.
	Whatever happened to a polling system once praised as the cleanest in the world?
	There is no point in being anything other than blunt: the 2004 Birmingham City Council elections were besmirched by a postal vote feeding frenzy.
	Fights in the streets, postmen offered bribes for sacks of ballot forms, a post box torched, car chases, threats, bullying and intimidation and the unforgettable image of a . . . councillor 'sorting out' ballot papers in the shadows of a back street car park at midnight."
	Sadly, the article is true. The reason why it is true is that, as I have said, postal votes became a currency, whereby a place on Birmingham city council, with a minimum salary of £9,000 and all the associated privileges, was the reward.
	The Minister has said that the overall result of postal voting proves that it was a success. It may have been a success in all-postal areas, but I would strongly advise him to talk to John Owens, Birmingham city council's elections officer—together with his team, he did a magnificent job in difficult circumstances during the elections—and to West Midlands police to find out whether they thought postal voting was such a great success.
	Let me tell hon. Members what happened in the reality of inner-city Birmingham. Birmingham has 40 wards, with electorates that range from approximately 17,000 to 20,000 people. Before the local and European election campaign, the highest numbers of registered postal votes were in wards such as Harborne, Quinton, Edgbaston and Sheldon—the Tory wards, traditionally, in the leafy suburbs. The highest number of postal votes registered was 1,616 in Quinton ward. However, by the end of the six-week campaign, the postal votes registered in some wards had increased. The number in Springfield went up from 812 to 3,796; the number in Lozells and East Handsworth went up from 529 to 3,998; in Sparkbrook, it went up from 1,067 to 4,483; in Aston, from 578 to 5,241; and in Washwood Heath, from 693 to 5,583.
	All those wards are in the central area of the city and all are multicultural, with very large communities that originate from the Indian subcontinent, but what happened in them is as nothing compared with what happened in the Bordsley Green ward. That newly created ward has 19,715 electors, about 50 to 60 per cent. of whom are from a single cultural group. When the election began, 691 people in that ward were registered for postal votes. In fact, that ward had one of the lowest numbers of postal votes in the city—it was 12th out of 40—but, in week 1, the number increased to 768. In week 2, it went up to 1,750; in week 3, it went up to 2,495; in week 4, it went up to 5,124; and in week 5, it went up to 7,195. When a halt was called on 2 June at the close of postal vote applications, the figure had reached 8,488. I hesitate to think what would have happened had the election campaign gone on for another three weeks.
	One would like to think that the dynamics of the campaign had galvanised more than 40 per cent. of the electorate in that ward to obtain their postal votes, but hon. Members can draw their own conclusions on why that happened. During campaigning in the ward, regular phone calls were made to the police by people complaining about the pressure that they were being put under. There was a fight between rival candidates' teams involving 200 people, which meant that a huge number of police from west midlands stations had to be brought into the area. A postman complained to his superiors that the brother of one of the candidates had offered him £500 for his sack of postal votes. That is the reality of what happened in an inner-city multicultural area.
	You might think, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that what I have described is at least highly suspicious, if not downright illegal. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. The West Midlands police carried out a survey by a special team, which concluded that, as the law is deficient, no one did anything wrong. Indeed, as the hon. Member for North Cornwall said, Councillor Albert Bore had something to say about that. According to The Birmingham Post:
	"Albert Bore, the leader of Birmingham City Council, maintains he is allowed to apply for postal votes on electors' behalf, he can have forms delivered to his house, he can fill the forms in for other people and deliver them to the elections office."
	The Birmingham Post then makes the point that that seems slipshod and unusual. It asked the Electoral Commission for its opinion and
	"a spokeswoman was adamant that it is 'unlawful' for a person to complete a postal ballot on behalf of another person unless that person has applied for a proxy vote."
	However, the Electoral Commission then changed its mind. It phoned The Birmingham Post back, insisting that
	"it could not offer advice on the law and suggesting instead that only the returning officer for"
	the city council, the
	"chief executive, could pronounce on such matters."
	So hon. Members will pardon me if my views on the Electoral Commission are somewhat jaundiced.
	Hon. Members will no doubt be appalled by some of what I have said, but I counsel caution against a knee-jerk reaction by Ministers. The reality is that in certain communities, the showing of completed postal votes to the candidate is a way of demonstrating loyalty. It will be difficult to frame a law that makes it illegal for a person voluntarily to show a completed postal vote to a candidate to prove their loyalty to that candidate.
	I regret that time is running out and I cannot share with hon. Members some other comments that I wanted to make. We must revisit the whole issue of postal votes, because we have to ensure that the electoral system is fair and seen to be fair. I have always believed that voting in public elections is a civic duty. I also believe that we would be better going down the road of compulsory voting, as Australia has done. Whatever happens, however, more safeguards need to be put in place. For example, electoral officers in the recent election were not compelled to have a marked register for people who voted by post. Thankfully, the electoral officer in Birmingham had a marked register. When it comes out, I have not the slightest doubt that the cemetery vote will be high and that a large number of people who were not even in the country voted on the day. We are privileged to live in a democracy, the cornerstone of which is the electoral system. Anything that brings it into disrepute undermines our democracy, and we must never allow that to happen.

Marion Roe: I welcome the opportunity to raise again in the House the issue of the integrity of the electoral register, because I continue to be concerned that the system for the registration of voters in England, Scotland and Wales is not sound, and could lead to election fraud.
	When I was appointed as an electoral scrutineer in the Seychelles on behalf of the Commonwealth, and in Angola on behalf of the United Nations, one of our first tasks was to decide who was entitled to vote, followed by a cleansing of the electoral roll. Only by setting down those important criteria could we acknowledge that a basic principle of free and fair elections had been met. I am sure we all accept that an accurate electoral register is a crucial cornerstone of any democracy. If it is corrupted or compromised in any way, the electoral process is undermined and the general public loses confidence in the integrity of the Administration.
	Nine months ago, I became aware that the names of constituents of mine who were foreign nationals were appearing on the electoral register. I remind Members that it is an offence for a householder to fail to give the electoral returning officer information that will enable him to discharge his registration duties or to provide false information. There may be a number of reasons why ineligible voters are registered. First, a family may lack the knowledge, education or expertise to complete the registration form correctly. Children may even be added to the roll because of a misunderstanding of the system. Secondly, foreign nationals may have little grasp of the English language. When the registration form comes through their letter-box, the householder, who is under a duty to complete the form, may not understand the rules and add the name of everyone living in the accommodation.
	Thirdly, foreign nationals know that they are not eligible to vote, and have no intention of doing so, but add their names to the register because it is extremely useful for obtaining credit cards, parking permits, loans, benefits and so on. Members will know that the electoral register is used as a database by many organisations to verify someone's residence. Fourthly, criminals may register false names to legitimise false identities and provide a cover for illegal activities such as benefit fraud. Fifthly, there may be an unfortunate and deliberate registering of people ineligible to vote, or of false names to corrupt the vote and enhance the chances of a particular candidate in local and general elections in marginal wards. Ballot rigging then becomes very easy indeed. Confusion is further increased by the fact that every electoral returning officer produces a different electoral register—they do not look alike, and there is no uniform presentation. In some parts of the country, they are in different languages to assist voters but, in all cases, many people find them complicated.
	I had serious anxieties about the whole business when I discovered that, in general, comprehensive checks were not made on people who added their names on to the register. Even worse, I was told that, to investigate people whose names looked foreign could be deemed racist, and that there was no need to worry because the system was self-regulatory. When I made inquiries with the Electoral Commission, I was informed:
	"If legislation required checks to be made by Electoral Registration Officers, it would be difficult to decide on what criteria these should be instigated and made . . . if such checks were done on the basis of the appearance or sound of names, such action could well be deemed to be racist and in breach of the law."
	Furthermore, the electoral returning officer is unlikely to make inquiries unless there is an objection to the inclusion of a particular name. The creation of the rolling register system has made it harder for political parties to use the claims and objections procedure, as the Electoral Commission acknowledged in its report, "The Electoral Registration Process", noting that
	"it is questionable whether the objection process really does have deterrent value . . . a more effective objection process is likely to be valuable in the prevention of fraud."
	In answer to a written question to the Department for Constitutional Affairs on 9 March 2004, the House was given a list of 20 constituencies in which the highest number of registered electors have been lost from the parliamentary register between 2001 and 2003. I draw attention to the constituency at the top of that list, Brentford and Isleworth, where there was a decrease of 15,486 or 18.6 per cent., which the Minister acknowledged
	"may be due to 'cleaning' of the registers rather than actual falls in the number of electors."—[Official Report, 9 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 1417W.]
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) said, Portsmouth, South showed a decrease of 11,210 or 14.5 per cent. Edinburgh, South showed a decrease of 7,163 or 11.1 per cent.; Brent, East showed a decrease of 6,968 or 12 per cent.; Bolton, South-East showed a decrease of 6,882 or 10.1 per cent.; and Dulwich and West Norwood showed a decrease of 6,812 or 9.7 per cent. There are also major implications for the boundary commissioners' work, which have yet to be acknowledged and addressed when assessing ward and constituency boundaries. This clearly demonstrates the size of the problem that we face.
	There is no doubt in my mind that the electoral register is being abused. The argument that cases of fraudulent registration rarely appear in the courts cannot support the view that there is no problem to solve. The reason that no prosecutions are taking place is that no checks are made and no evidence is exposed. I should like to read an extract from an article that appeared in the Daily Mail on 7 February 2004, which stated:
	"The astonishing ease with which fraudsters are corrupting the electoral system is exposed today. As abuse increases, especially by benefit cheats and illegal immigrants, a Daily Mail investigation has highlighted a culture of inefficiency and political correctness within local councils.
	It allowed us to register a fictitious student, called Gus Troobev, an anagram of 'bogus voter', on 31 Electoral Registers, within just a few hours and to obtain 9 further bogus votes in the most marginal seat in Britain. The Mail has no intention of using any of the 40 votes but, theoretically, they could be used by political parties to swing elections.
	Almost all the Councils we contacted were happy to allow our man to register for elections without asking for any proof of identity. Most of the officials we later asked if Gus Troobev had made it onto the Register said they would not dare investigate an applicant just because he or she had a foreign-sounding name or had lived overseas. Gus Troobev is now on the Electoral Roll of 31 key constituencies from Scotland to the South West of England."
	So who can vote in elections in the United Kingdom? British citizens can vote in all elections—local, national and European. Citizens of the Irish Republic can do the same, as can all Commonwealth citizens. Finally, citizens of a country that is a member of the European Union can vote in local elections and choose whether to cast their votes in the UK or their country of origin at European parliamentary elections. But under our present system of registration, how can a returning officer know whether John Smith is British and entitled to vote in all elections, or Canadian and entitled to vote in all elections, or American and not entitled to vote in any elections? It is impossible to know unless a thorough identity check is available on each individual.
	In Northern Ireland, the problem of fraudulent voting—"Vote early, vote often"—was confronted and dealt with through the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. Now, in Northern Ireland, there is individual registration of each voter. Householders are no longer responsible for completing forms of behalf of all residents in the home. On the new registration form, there are five identifiers: name, address, date of birth, national insurance number and personal signature. Those details can, of course, be checked more easily but, more importantly, the voter must produce photographic identification documents from a list of options at the polling station when they go to vote. There was a reduction of some 120,000 names or 10 per cent. on the first register compiled under the new system of individual registration, compared with its predecessor, compiled under the household registration system. Thus, the electoral register gained credibility, and confidence in the whole procedure of voting at elections is being restored. In December 2003, the Electoral Commission produced a report outlining its analysis on the workings of the new system in Northern Ireland, and made recommendations for further improvement.
	In one corner of the United Kingdom, we have already acknowledged the difficulties of producing an accurate electoral register, and we introduced legislation to correct the flaws. What are the Government doing to ensure that the same approach is adopted for the rest of the country, particularly bearing in mind that, for the first time, everybody was voting by post for the European elections and local elections a few weeks ago in the north-east, the north-west, the east midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside regions?
	I believe that the Government have put the cart before the horse. It is almost an enticement to vote illegally when the ballot papers are put through one's letterbox with every encouragement to use them. It appears that the Government are sending out the message, "We want as many people to vote as possible, even if they are not eligible to do so." In his statement of 15 January 2004 on the Government's electoral modernisation agenda, the Minister for Local and Regional Government said:
	"We are committed to making voting more accessible and straightforward for the electorate and to allow people more flexibility in where and when they vote."—[Official Report, 15 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 43WS.]
	I put it to the Minister that the question of who is eligible to vote should surely be the priority focus, before the introduction of multi-channelled e-enabled elections.
	I believe that returning officers need to be given direction on scrutiny of the electoral register, protected from accusations of racism, harassment and so on, and supported with sufficient resources to fulfil their duties. Another knock-on effect is that the percentage figures of those voting are completely distorted because a large number of people on the electoral register are not entitled to vote in the first place.
	We must ensure that secure procedures are in place for the registration of voters, so that the integrity of the electoral register is constantly maintained. Every loophole to corrupt our electoral process must be removed and any unfairness eliminated.

Paul Stinchcombe: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate and affording me the opportunity to make just a few observations on the crisis into which our democracy is now falling.
	Turnout in the 1992 general election was 77.7 per cent. Nine years later, in 2001, it had fallen to just 59.4 per cent. That amounts to a loss of 7 million voters in less than a decade—7 million people who had voluntarily chosen to disfranchise themselves, including many millions of women who gave up their vote less than 80 years after Emily Wilding Davison gave up her life to help secure that vote for them. Of course, turnout in other elections is already far lower. The British disengagement with politics is now so extensive that "Monty Python" has become a reality TV show. Joke candidates have been elected as mayors, only the joke is not so funny any more, because when turnout tumbles, along with the football mascots, we get the fascists as well.
	We in this place have to ask ourselves how that has happened, and how we have turned a democracy that was once cherished into one that is so widely derided, disrespected and distrusted. We have to ask ourselves what on earth we are going to do about it as we face the awful prospect of a Government being elected when fewer than half their people have spoken.
	It is my belief that, in many ways, democracy is analogous to a marriage between the people and Parliament, with elections the ritual that joins them. The trouble is that that marriage is now failing. It failed first from neglect, and now it is failing from abuse, and it is often Parliament that is the more abused party. After all, we are a Parliament full of parliamentarians who, as the papers always tell the people, are only in it for themselves, live high off parliamentary freebies and vote like lemmings for fear of the parliamentary Whip.
	The neglect in that marriage first manifested itself in lack of interest, as people sat on their sofas rather than walked to the ballot box. Then came the abuse, which is, in some respects, manifested by the all-postal voting system. As we endeavoured to drive up turnout, what we actually did was give people who did not really want to vote at all even more opportunities to beat us. We generated a huge protest vote—a protest against the Government, the war and Europe, and a protest against the Government's position on Europe and against the Opposition's position on it; a plague, indeed, on all of our House.
	In part, I think that that is the fault of the press, aspects of which operate as a national conspiracy to keep everybody in a sustained sense of outrage. It is a sad reality that parties then use spin doctors to administer the antidote to the bias in the press, and in turn that allows the press to paint the spin doctors as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.
	In part, the situation is the fault of both Governmentand Opposition Members. Opposition MPs understandably fall in behind the marching bands of the right-wing press, which whip up cynicism and apathy throughout the land. Government Back Benchers are subordinated to the Executive, but that is not our fault. The media always paint a questioning political party as a divided political party, and MPs know that divided political parties rarely win.
	The largest factor is the fundamental failings of our unwritten constitution, to which we cleave as though it were the grand protector of liberty and rights. We celebrate the unwritten constitution's antiquated quaintness, when in truth the unwritten constitution is deeply dysfunctional. The causes of constitutional dysfunction go to the root of our institutions and to the heart of our constitution.
	We have never even begun to resolve the tension between the dual claims to supremacy—parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. Institutionally, that tension manifests itself in the uncomfortable position of the Lord Chancellor, who sits in the Cabinet, the legislature and the country's highest court. Doctrinally, it manifests itself in the fine arguments of judicial review, in which courts tiptoe around policy decisions, interpreting statutes but never challenging them. Indeed, the courts intervene only when decisions are perverse.
	We have a confusion of powers, which we claim are separate, and the arguments that we use to justify that constitutional confusion are deeply unpersuasive and no longer carry the confidence of the people. The people instinctively know that our assertion of parliamentary sovereignty is not in truth enough to legitimise all the decisions that we make. That is not only because MPs are sometimes whipped into voting for the Cabinet and against their consciences, or because people know that that even majorities can be wrong, but because the people know that most of their votes do not count for very much.
	Individual votes at elections do not choose the Prime Minister, and they rarely choose MPs. In 1997, my vote for the Labour candidate in Beaconsfield yielded me exactly the same amount of representation as I would have obtained by tearing up my ballot paper up and setting fire to it. None of us has a vote for a member of the second chamber, and, apart from Lesotho, we are the only nation in the world with legislators who are present through an accident of birth. As long ago as 1791, Thomas Paine wrote in "The Rights of Man" that the idea of hereditary legislators is as absurd as the idea of hereditary mathematicians. The people know that when the courts refuse to intervene on their behalf out of respect for parliamentary sovereignty, the decision is not made in Parliament. Such decisions are made either by the Executive or by an executive—a housing officer, someone on an immigration desk or a planning inspector.
	The people are not persuaded by the rule of law, because if the red-top media are cynical about us, what do they say about judges? They say that judges are old; they say that judges are old Etonians, who are completely out of touch with ordinary people and ordinary lives; and, of course, they say that judges are absurdly soft on crime and criminals. That point contains an element of truth, because the people know that judges do not represent them and are not representative of them.
	If people ever paused to think about the judicial invention of the man on the Clapham omnibus, they would soon notice, first, that that person is a man; secondly, that that person is a white man; thirdly, that that person is a bencher at Lincoln's Inn; and finally that that person has never been on the Clapham omnibus in their life. We therefore end up with a deep distrust of all our institutions. The perception that Parliament is not sovereign but supine means that people do not vote, and when the fools and the fascists get elected as a result, the people do not trust the judges to protect them.
	What did we do about those problems? We introduced compulsory postal voting, which seems inadequate. Compulsory postal voting is also dangerous, and we must learn the lessons. We had an all-postal vote in the east midlands. That meant that my constituents had to entrust their votes to one of the worst postal services in the country, which had not recovered from a fire in one of its depots. In my constituency, 404 votes arrived late, and another 430 papers were completed incorrectly. More than 830 voters raised their voices, but their voices were not heard. That concerns me, because when I was first elected, my majority was 187, which is one fifth of the votes that were not counted. What was the cause of at least some of those spoiled votes? It was the Liberal amendment in the Lords that required people to have their ballot papers countersigned. What an affront to the privacy of the electoral process! For a generation of women, one of the first features of their liberation was that their husbands never knew how they voted. I wonder how many women felt compelled only a few weeks ago either to show their ballot papers to their husbands or not to vote for fear of showing them to their husbands.
	Is not the requirement for a witness the biggest invitation to fraudsters to try to manipulate the vote? What does the returning officer do when he receives 100 votes countersigned by the same person and covered in Tippex? Of course, we need to increase turnout, but compulsory postal voting is too blunt an instrument safely to do the job.
	What should we do? At least at the general election, we must ensure that people have a choice about whether they vote by post or by walking to the polling station.

Martin Smyth: In Northern Ireland, the Electoral Commission has managed to get people off the electoral roll. In the European poll, not only did the figure go down in percentage terms but the total number of people on registers decreased. The Electoral Commission will have to get its act together, because it is robbing people of the right to vote.

Paul Stinchcombe: Indeed, lessons will be learned throughout the United Kingdom from the turnout in the areas where the various pilots for different systems took place.
	We should expand rather than remove opportunities to vote in person at the ballot box. We should give people more time—a week or a weekend—to vote. We should move towards making all votes count, not by introducing proportional representation for the House of Commons or getting rid of the constituency link but by reforming the House of Lords so that it is indirectly elected by the secondary mandate at the same time as we elect Members of Parliament. Thus we would not pile yet more elections on an election-weary electorate but add weight to the votes that they have already cast.
	My final suggestion may be the constitutional upheaval that Conservative Members fear. If the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) is right and only countries have constitutions, why do not we write one for ourselves, together with a Bill of Rights? Both should be drafted by us, for us and according to our values, not written abroad and incorporated by parliamentary transplant. In that way, we can entrust Parliament with developing policies that would progressively realise those rights. We can ask a more legitimate second Chamber to scrutinise the work, and give a watching brief to a more representative, independently appointed constitutional court, empowered to enforce the Bill of Rights and the UK constitution through the respectful dialogue between constitutional courts and elected Parliaments, as happens in other constitutional democracies.
	In South Africa, democracy and human rights genuinely matter. People were executed as they fought for a vote denied them by the colour of their skin, and the apartheid regime was enacted by a sovereign Parliament and upheld by the courts and the rule of law. Parliament there is now populated by many who were imprisoned on Robben island for daring to fight for the right to vote. In South Africa, constitutional democracy is cherished as the protection against such events ever happening again, whether through white supremacists or a one-party democracy. If South Africans perceive the need to enshrine their values in a constitutional democracy, not fearful of undermining the sovereignty of Parliament or the rule of law, perhaps we should be learn a lesson from that.
	The legitimacy not only of our electoral system but of our democracy and our constitution is being called into question by millions who neither vote nor trust the courts. Rather than relying on compulsory postal ballots to rescue us, we need to examine more radical measures, which would truly bring a new legitimacy to our failing democracy and our flawed electoral system.

Patrick Cormack: The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) crammed a great deal into his speech, some of which I agreed with and much of which I did not. However, when we consider the voting figures for the past few elections, it is right to be concerned. I believe that there is a fairly simple explanation.
	In 1992, when turnout was fairly high, the election was keenly contested. It was possible that the Labour party could win and people came out to vote in great numbers. They were also much influenced by what happened during the campaign. One need only mention the two words, "Sheffield rally". In 1997, we had a Government who were discredited and a party that had imploded and did not deserve the confidence of the people. We were seen off. In 2001, people were beginning to be disillusioned with the Labour Government, but if they had fallen out of love with them, they certainly had not fallen in love with us, so we did not benefit from any decline in support for Labour. Those simple facts explain more clearly than anything else why there was a decline. When people are really and truly interested, they will vote.
	I would like to refer to the excellent, arresting and disturbing speech made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff). He took today's debate out of the party political arena and made us focus on some real and important facts. What he said about the postal voting in Birmingham should make us all pause and think. Every hon. Member who has fought many general elections—I have fought every one for the last 40 years—has had a slightly disturbing experience with postal votes, whether it involves someone who has influence over his own particular group, or the matron or superintendent of a home, who says, "It will be all right. We'll make sure they do it properly." We all have to acknowledge that the system is open to abuse, and it is more open to abuse than using a polling booth.
	The Minister's speech was far too glib and complacent, and did not recognise the implicit faults that are present in any postal voting system, although they are not always capable of proof, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe) pointed out. This does not mean that I am against postal votes, but I am in favour of choice. It should be the conscious choice of the elector to vote by post; if the elector wishes to do so, he or she should be allowed to do so. There should be some form of verification of identity, but there should not be a requirement to prove that they are going to be on holiday, or that they are ill or incapacitated. They should be able to make a conscious choice.
	In the recent election, many people were very unhappy about being forced to vote by post. I come from Lincolnshire—my home town was Grimsby—and I received a number of letters from friends there who said, "Whenever you get the opportunity, do say that we do not want this choice permanently taken away from us. We treasure the fact that we go consciously to a polling booth to cast our vote." We deprive our electorate of that choice at the peril of our democracy.
	I am fundamentally opposed to compulsory postal voting for two reasons above all others. One is that it effectively abolishes polling day. The other is that it abolishes the influence that a campaign can have. I referred briefly to the Sheffield rally, but we can all remember certain incidents, some of which have been to the advantage of our own party and others that have not. I remember the first general election that I fought, in 1964, in the constituency of Bolsover. Of course, I was never going to have a chance of winning, but I managed to reduce the majority from around 24,000 to 23,000. That was the best I could do. However, I remember that two things happened that could have influenced that campaign if they had happened a day or two earlier. One was the Chinese explosion of an atomic device; the other was the fall of Khrushchev.
	During an election campaign, it is important that people should constantly be listening to the people who are seeking to represent them. I deeply deplore the demise of the public meeting; I hold them every night in my constituency. People should be continually aware of what is going on during the campaign, so that their minds can be influenced right up to the time when they go into the polling booth. With compulsory all-postal voting, we destroy that at a stroke.
	We also, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath graphically demonstrated, run the risk of destroying the secret ballot. The secret ballot has been a feature of our democracy for only 140 years—before that, we stood on the hustings and proclaimed our allegiance. I could not help but think of that when he was talking about the demonstration of loyalty—a demonstration of loyalty voluntarily given is one thing, but a demonstration of loyalty yielded out of fear or intimidation is very different. I hope that those are factors on which the Government will think carefully.
	If we are truly anxious, regardless of the will of the electorate, to increase participation in elections, there is an alternative, to which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath, towards the close of his speech, alluded briefly. That is the system that they have not only in Australia but in Belgium and other places—compulsory voting. If an element of compulsion is to be introduced, it should be that. People can then choose to vote by post or by going to the polling station. They can write, "A plague on both your houses," which was the substance of the hon. Member for Wellingborough's summation of the recent election, they can put more vulgar slogans, or they can return in the post a blank ballot paper. So great are the problems that we face, however—some of those to do with the integrity of the register were referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne—that we ought to give some thought to compulsory registration, without which people would not be entitled to benefits and other things. If someone registers compulsorily, they have a duty to vote compulsorily, by returning a ballot paper in one form or another. In that way, we do away with most of the opportunities for abuse, we increase the turnout, and we concentrate the minds of the politicians—those of us who sit here or seek to sit here.

Mark Tami: The hon. Gentleman has touched on a crucial point: even were there fraud under such a system, because turnout is much higher, it is much more difficult to influence the result by fraudulent means.

Patrick Cormack: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making a point that I was hoping to make a little later. If we have, as I believe that Belgium had on 10 June, a turnout of more than 90 per cent., or as they have in Australia, the incidence of fraud is diminished in its impact.
	What we should all be concerned about is the reputation of our democracy, and what we aspire to do here. I am old-fashioned in my views of this place and of seeking election to this place. I believe that politics is an honourable vocation. Those of us who feel called to public service have a right to place ourselves before the electorate, and they have the right to choose. We have the duty to ensure that they have the means of choice. The way in which the Government are seeking to tackle this is misguided. It is not malevolent. I do not for a moment impugn the integrity of either of the Ministers on the Front Bench—they are both good chaps—but I do not think that they have thought it through sufficiently seriously. They have dismissed the Sparkbrook argument without listening to it, and now that they have heard it, I hope that they will take it on board, because it is a very important argument.
	If Ministers are motivated by turnout, I hope that they will reflect on the logical, perfectly honourable precedent of compulsory voting—as we have said, there are precedents in other countries. If that is the road that they want to take, let us take it together. At the end of the day, however, let them realise that it is not the duty of the Government, by fiat—that is virtually what happened last time, and a Government with a big majority, such as this, behave in that way—to deprive people of choice. By all means, if a man or a woman wants to vote by post, let them do so, but do not deprive them of the opportunity of going to the polling booth.
	It is no answer to suggest that because there is an alternative booth—one in a large area—that solves the problem. It does not. There is no substitute for the local polling station near where people live. Many people, particularly the elderly, rejoice in the fact that they make a real, conscious effort to go to vote. In the last general election, without doubt the most moving experience for me occurred in one polling station quite near a large old people's home. Those people were coming in, and being pushed in in wheelchairs—in one case, a bath chair—and they told me that they wanted to do that. They said that they did not want postal votes because coming out to vote was what they wanted to do.
	If that is what people want to do, it is an arrogant assertion of overbearing power for any Government to deprive them of that. I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he will recognise the validity of our arguments and show that he wants us to move forward in a way that affords proper choice to all our people.

Andrew Bennett: The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) should look carefully at Australia. It appears that with compulsory voting there, the number of people voting at each successive general election is falling and that the number of prosecutions is small. I do not think that compulsory voting is such a good idea. It would be a much better principle to say that when someone gets elected, any people who did not vote count as part of their majority because they had the chance to vote for someone else if they wanted, but did not.
	The most important thing in this debate is to put firmly on the record our thanks to all those people who made the recent elections a success—all the returning officers, who did an excellent job, and all the election staff. We should also congratulate the Post Office, which turned up trumps in almost every case, throughout the country. I also add my thanks to the party workers who in most cases, particularly in the north of England where this had to be done that little bit earlier, got the election literature out so that people could make an informed choice.
	The debate would have been better if the Tory party had not just had a rant in opening it, and, I am afraid, if we had not seen some amazing hypocrisy from the Liberal party. The Liberals told us that they would wait and see what the Electoral Commission had to say, but their amendment firmly pre-empts the commission by suggesting that the whole system is in chaos.
	We need to recognise that many of the problems occurred because of the ping-pong between this House and the House of Lords. The House of Lords must take some responsibility for the chaos that it caused. We must also recognise that the deal that was done to get the legislation through—the witness statement—was a big mistake. It is quite clear that some people living on their own did not vote because of the problems of going to ask a neighbour or someone else for the witness statement. The witness statement is absolutely pointless. It is probably true that if a voter put down Mickey Mouse, with Disneyland for the address, the returning officer would have disallowed the statement, but if they put down John Smith at some address somewhere in the country, there was no chance of that statement being checked out. The witness statement is a waste of time, and we do not need it.
	It was unfortunate that the Electoral Commission discouraged the political parties from helping people to return their ballot papers, and from signing the witness statements. That was a serious mistake. I must also say to the Tory party that the more that we insist on a witness statement, the lesser the degree of secrecy for the individual voter. If we do not have a witness statement, a voter can take their paper away, sign it and send it off without being influenced at all by other people.
	We should firmly congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local and Regional Government on going ahead with the experiment, because we learned a great deal. That does not mean to say that I necessarily want us to carry on having experiments, but we should recognise just how important this experiment was.
	First, we had a much higher turnout, which was worthwhile. Secondly, we had to look into the matter of size. There is some question as to whether there are enough security printers to extend the arrangements so that all local elections could be done through an all-postal ballot. I think that that is questionable. One suggestion is to solve the problem by providing more time between the nominations and sending the ballot papers out, but we should remember that we have been fantastically lucky in this country in that we have not had to conduct a by-election in the middle of a general election since 1955, when a parliamentary candidate died and an election had to be put off. The longer the period between nominations and voting, the greater the likelihood of having to re-run an election when a candidate dies.
	We must also recognise that the experiment showed that many people were not volunteering for it. Almost all the experiments up to this point were conducted by volunteers—in other words, by the dynamic returning officers who were keen to prove that they could conduct an experiment. This time, however, we had one or two people who, to put it kindly, were not particularly up to the job. We have to recognise that if we moved to an all-postal vote system, there could be problems there.
	There is also the problem of expense. We have to weigh up whether all-postal voting provides value for money. We also have to acknowledge that a half-and-half system, towards which we might be moving, may be even more expensive, with half the people opting for a postal vote and the other half going to the polling station. If we were interested solely in increasing turnout, it might be better simply to say to all the electors that they could have £5 off their council tax if they voted. That might well get more people to vote, without incurring all the expenses of the system.
	We must now evaluate the experiments properly, but not to place blame, as all the political parties have pressed for extra postal voting. We now need to ask ourselves how best to move forward. It has to be through the Electoral Commission, but if so, we should also have a few people representing the political parties sitting on it. That might give the Electoral Commission a little more experience of the realities of electioneering.
	I promised that I would conclude my speech in six minutes and I am sorry that I have overrun. I congratulate all those people who made the system just work this time and I congratulate the Government on carrying it all out, but we now need a full evaluation.

Angela Watkinson: I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate, because it is essential that we preserve the hitherto high reputation of our voting system, which has been brought into question by the problems that have arisen with all-postal voting.
	The essential ingredients of our voting system are confidentiality, privacy and security. All those three elements have been put into question by various recent problems and they have been undermined by recent innovations to increase the turnout in elections. I would question the practice of describing all-postal voting as "turnout", because that is the one thing that people do not have to bother to do. The traditional method, on which our reputation has been built, centres on trust and the confidence of the electorate. It is a private matter. People do not want others to know how they voted.
	Theoretically, under the traditional system, someone could wade through hundreds of thousands of used randomly sorted ballot papers to look for one particular number, but it is unlikely that that would ever be attempted and even less likely that it would be successful. People like to see their vote being put into a sealed ballot box and they enjoy the ritual of going to their polling station and voting in person. With an all-postal ballot system, they are not allowed to do that. It is important that they reserve the right to make a choice as to whether to vote by post or in person. When someone applies for a postal vote in person, it shows an indication of the intent to vote, which is quite different from issuing a postal ballot paper to everyone, especially when many people have no intention of voting in the first place.
	In the 2002 local elections, Havering was one of the pilots for postal voting. As I have noted before, there was a problem with the one-envelope system, under which people put their declaration of identity and their ballot paper into the same envelope. The voter's ward could be identified from the outside of those envelopes, which meant that people could know where that voter lived and his or her likely voting intentions. When the ballot paper and the declaration of identity were returned to the town hall, they had to be separated. At that stage, too, it could have been possible to discover how voters had voted. That did not happen, but people resented the fact that the opportunity had been created.
	I know that the percentage of people voting rose in the recent elections, but that happened at a price. The price was the number of irregularities in the election process, and the fact that voters were deprived of choice. The hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward) is no longer in her place, but I was concerned about her report of what happened in Watford. I had thought that the one-envelope system had been discontinued, but it sounded to me as though it might have remained in operation there.
	I want to challenge the received wisdom that it should be made easier for people to vote. That should not be confused with increasing the percentage of people who use their vote. It is already easy and convenient for people to vote, and to get a postal vote. They have only to ask for one: they do not have to give any justification or explanation. However, even doing that much requires a little effort by voters. It is not great, but people have to take the trouble to ask for a postal vote.
	At election time, some people do not even notice that an election is going on. Despite what they read in the newspapers, hear on the radio or see on the television, and despite the contents of the posters hung in windows or the leaflets pushed through their letter boxes, some people claim not to know that an election is being held. It takes quite a lot of effort to ignore all that. I suggest that those people are unlikely to have bothered to give the election any thought at all. They will not have considered the issues involved, or compared the attributes of the various candidates. They disfranchise themselves by neglect and treat their privileged vote with disdain—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We must not have continued chuntering from a sedentary position.

Angela Watkinson: I challenge whether the Government have the right to make it easy for people to vote, when that is already so very easy to do. Some people choose not to use that privilege.
	Another problem is the unreliability of the post. I have been inundated with complaints from people who did not receive their ballot papers. Many complaints came from people who happened to be on holiday on election day. They had informed the town hall of the date when their holiday was due to begin, and had been assured that their ballot papers would arrive in time. When that did not happen, they lost the opportunity to vote, even though had made the effort to make inquiries.
	I hope that the Minister will clarify one point. He will correct me if I am wrong, but in a television interview I thought that I heard him say that people who did not receive their ballot papers in time could go to their town hall's electoral registration department and ask for one. When people did that in Havering, the town hall refused to give them another ballot paper. Did the town halls have different instructions, or did I misunderstand what the Minister said?

Christopher Leslie: I shall try and clarify that. In the all-postal regions, the failsafe in the unlikely eventuality that people did not receive their ballot papers was that they could go and get a replacement. The bar codes used on the documents meant that the original ballot paper would be cancelled automatically. Those arrangements did not exist outside the pilot regions. The experience described by the hon. Lady was not related to the pilot on all-postal voting.

Angela Watkinson: The Minister is right to say that there was no all-postal voting in Havering on this occasion, but the incident throws up one of the problems associated with postal voting. The people who suffered had made the effort to ask for a postal ballot paper. They explained when they needed it and were assured that they would receive it. I have received many letters on this matter. My constituents Mr. and Mrs. Lewis recounted how they boarded a coach one day and found that it contained 25 other people who had also not received the postal ballot papers that they had requested.
	In contrast, a member of staff in my constituency office received four ballot papers, in separate envelopes, on the same day. She destroyed the three spare papers, but how many other people had the same experience, and what did they do with the extra papers?
	Many elderly people did not understand the multiple elections that were held on the same day. I had to ask for help from the presiding officer at the polling station, as the matter was so very complicated. So I would like the Minister to look into the issue of multiple elections on the same day, especially when the voting methods are different for the component parts. It is confusing, particularly for elderly people, who have voted all their lives but are used to one particular way of doing it. Please may we retain choice for people who do not want to vote by post and want to see their ballot paper going into the ballot box?

Clive Betts: The issue that exercises hon. Members on both sides of the House is that of low turnout. Low turnout undermines the validity of the whole democratic process and the authority of elected representatives. That is why it is right that, with all-party support, we looked into running pilots for different sorts of voting in local elections. The obvious conclusion was that only all-postal ballots increased turnout substantially. It was therefore surely right in turn that we looked at a wider pilot, which we have just conducted, to see whether the lessons from the smaller pilots could be applied on a larger basis. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) turned the matter into a party political issue, because I agreed with some of the other points that he made.
	I was concerned, as all hon. Members will have been, by the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) about what happened in Birmingham. In Sheffield there have been no allegations of widespread fraud. I am certainly not aware of any such allegations; I am not aware of any allegations in my constituency. There were no real problems with postal delivery.
	The real problems, if there were any, were around the witness statement, which confused many people, not just elderly people, and the wording of the instructions that came with the ballot papers. If I had not understood the process, I would have been pretty confused by the wording. It varied from region to region; the instructions that I saw in London were far clearer than those in Yorkshire. So there are lessons to be learned by the Electoral Commission and the Government.
	The problems with security and fraud in postal voting, as the Electoral Commission said over and over again at the Select Committee inquiry, are general problems with postal voting, not problems with all-postal voting. We should get back to that and get away from the party political points.
	I want to put forward four basic principles for a way forward. We should be concerned about ease of voting. I disagree with the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson). We should make it as easy as possible for people to vote—of course legitimately. We should be concerned about the security of the vote, about the consistency of the electoral process, and about choice.
	To take consistency first, we have had the pilot projects and it is right that we should learn from them, share experiences and look at what went right and what went wrong. Clearly, many more people voted than would have done with the traditional system. That is a good thing. We should not get into small arguments about how much the percentage turnout went up. It was clearly higher, and I believe that it was higher because of all-postal voting. It is clear that in any system of voting, people have to have the right to vote by post whether because they are ill, or on holiday, or working away. So postal voting has to be part of the voting system. However, I have some sympathy with the points made by some Opposition Members and with people in my constituency who have said, "We vote in every election as a matter of principle, but we do not feel that we have voted properly this time because we have not been able to go to the polling station." So we ought to take account as well of the wishes of the people who vote every time.
	Let us have consistency. Let us decide what is the best form of voting. Having had the pilot projects, it is right that we devise a form of voting that applies at all elections so that people know what to expect every time and do not have to rethink how they will vote at each election. Within that, we should have different types of voting. People should have the right to vote by post and the right to vote at a ballot station. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) that that will mean extra cost, but it is a cost worth paying to enhance our democratic process. Eventually, we may get on to e-voting as another option.
	People may say that we already have that system of voting, but we can make a postal vote easier to obtain. In Sheffield, people can now tick a box on the electoral registration form to apply for a form to fill in to get a postal vote. Why not make it easier? Why not have boxes that people can tick to indicate whether they want to vote at a ballot station or by post? People should get their postal vote automatically if they tick the box, with no need for an extra form. That would simplify the process.
	In terms of security, I agree that individual voter registration must be introduced. For example, we need checks on signatures to ensure that the voting system is secure. We should also implement a limit on the number of ballot papers that can be sent to an address for people who are not registered there, in the same way as we limit the number of proxy votes that one individual can exercise.
	I am concerned about the registration process, probably for slightly different reasons from the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe). There is a real problem with people not sending registration forms back and being disfranchised as a result. Perhaps the Government could work with local authorities and provide a little more money for the canvassing process, because that is not being done properly in many areas. Registration officers say that in some areas up to 98 per cent. of forms are returned, but in other areas it is only 50 per cent. Resources should be put into that issue, because individual registration will make the process more complicated and difficult. In practice, no one is ever prosecuted for failing to return the form, so we could consider giving a bonus for doing so—perhaps a rebate on the council tax.
	It is difficult for me to say so, but I commend the system of Westminster council, which sends out a card to everyone after the register has been drawn up, saying who is registered in their house. That is good practice, which should be replicated throughout the country.
	Finally, I would just say to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) that if the looks on the faces of the Liberal Democrats at the count in Sheffield on 11 June were those of people who had just scored a spectacular success at the ballot box, I would hate to see the looks on the faces of those who had just lost an election that they clearly expected to win.

Tim Boswell: If this debate has one result, it will be that we all take the electoral system and its integrity more seriously, and I welcome that. In the interests of time I will confine my remarks primarily to my experience in the all-postal pilot region of the east midlands, where I live. What took place shook my own and my constituents' faith in the integrity of the process—so much so that even though I had probably voted more often by post than in person in the past 40 years, I went to the assistance and delivery point and put my ballot in the box, along with some 7 per cent. of those who voted in my area.
	I do not like getting letters from constituents enclosing spoiled ballot papers with their protest about what they have been asked to do. There are three main reasons for the situation. First, the pilots were over-ambitious and, therefore, under-explained to the electorate. Secondly, the traditional and still generally preferred default option of going to vote in person was withdrawn. Thirdly, when I first voted by post 40 years ago, there were perhaps 500,000 postal votes in the general election. This time, there were 14 million in the pilot areas alone, with probably some 17 million overall. It is a simple issue of scale.
	I first became aware of problems with ballot papers when my agent alerted me to them at about half past 11 on Wednesday 26 May. By fluke, I had the chance of a long-odds question to the Prime Minister and I was able to raise the issue with him that morning. It was clear that he had already been briefed about the problems that had developed; the alarm bells had obviously started to ring. For various reasons—I shall not go into them now, although I have a full report to share with the Minister—none of the ballots in South Northamptonshire, which is one of the districts in my constituency, the other being Daventry, was delivered until 2 June. The bulk of the ballots appeared on 3 June, and a limited number trickled in up to the weekend. It was an appalling start to the process, although it was not necessarily wholly the responsibility of Ministers. It was redeemed by sterling work by the two local returning officers and their staff in Daventry and South Northamptonshire, who worked long hours, not only on election night but over an extended period to put matters right.
	Several issues for Ministers arise. First, they have to face the costs of the system. I have had a helpful response to a written question from the Minister, saying that the Government will meet any reasonable exceptional costs. If we are to do this again in future, we will have to have more assistance and delivery points, and the budget will have to be extended to cover them. When I looked at the figures, almost all the costs allocated to my district council were for the printing of ballots and the postal contract. After staff were taken into account, no exceptional costs were included.
	Secondly, Ministers must understand that time is critical in the process. The delay of a week reduced the number of days for turning round ballot papers to five, which made things extremely difficult for people who were on holiday. I am slightly worried about the Post Office itself—the Minister was rather complacent on that point; for example, I understand that its helpline to returning officers was shut over the weekend.
	My impression is that the Electoral Commission was not very active during the election, but it must take into account all the representations and experience that have built up. I am concerned about double registrations. Like many Members, I received two Euro votes and tore one up. I am sure we all did that, but the fact that such an occasion could arise is worrying.
	The whole exercise was an object lesson in not getting things right first time. In a sense, of course, that is what happens in a pilot. However, there are real worries about abuse. According to the Daventry returning officer, turnout rose, although not in all wards and not solely due to all-postal voting—his comment, not mine. That higher turnout came at the price of some public confidence in the system. The ballot turned into a dull administrative exercise instead of having the important element of ritual and performance.
	My electors deserve their right to choose and to be able to go to the polling station on election day—and, when the time comes, to turn out en masse to dismiss this Government of failed initiatives.

Bernard Jenkin: We have had a far more interesting debate than the extraordinarily complacent reply delivered by the Minister in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) indicated. Concerns about the pilots were raised on both sides of the House and, despite the Minister's complacency about our electoral system, the state of the electoral roll, the state of postal voting and the conduct of his electoral pilots leave much to be desired.
	The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) complained that the debate had been too party political, but I have to tell him that many people are concerned that the Government are using and abusing the electoral system for their political ends, as I shall explain. It pains me to say that; it is a sad state of affairs when things come to that pass.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) raised important points about the additional costs of the pilots and the Government must address those. He was right to point out that the pilots were over-ambitious. We all knew that the pilots were over-ambitious. Evidence to the Select Committee was that the pilots were over-ambitious. The Electoral Commission, which the Government set up to advise them, told the Government—[Interruption.] Whether we want to keep the commission or not—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Bernard Jenkin: Whether we want to keep the Electoral Commission or not, the Minister and his party set it up, presumably so that the Government could take its advice. However, they do not take the commission's advice. The Government ignored its advice about the number of pilots. They ignored the evidence given by the printers to the Select Committee that they would get in a mess. By playing fast and loose with our electoral system, the Government have paid a heavy political price in the perception of their fitness to govern, but the British people, too, have paid a heavy political price in the credibility of our electoral system.
	We have heard of postmen being offered £500 to hand over sacks of uncompleted ballot papers, of a postman in south Liverpool being mugged for the ballot papers he was delivering, of the police launching allegations of malpractice in Bradford, of Burnley police planning to question 60 people about 170 suspect proxy votes, of abandoned sacks of uncompleted ballot papers being found in Blackpool, of dead people suddenly coming to life and voting, and of intimidation in Burnley, Bradford, Derby, Oldham, and Rochdale—to name but a few places.
	The system of all-postal voting allows possibly countless instances of intimidation and breach of secrecy in the home or the community that may never be reported or come to light. If the Minister thinks that the only speeding offences committed on the roads are those caught by the cameras and the police, he is living in another world. [Interruption.] Listen to the Labour leader of Birmingham city council, quoted by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), who said—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If the Minister wishes to intervene, he ought to stand up in the usual way and intervene properly. Continual chattering from the Front Bench in that way disrupts the debate.

Bernard Jenkin: My comments must be getting under the Minister's skin, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	The Labour leader of Birmingham city council said—I quote from memory—that the law is so general that almost anything is allowed. The problems of gathering evidence and prosecuting are very difficult bearing in mind that evidence that will carry a conviction beyond all reasonable doubt is needed. So what is needed is not post-operative care of the electoral system after the elections have taken place, using the courts and criminal prosecutions and investigations, but an electoral system that pre-empts the problems that may arise. That has singularly failed to happen in the postal pilot schemes.

Andrew Bennett: rose—

Bernard Jenkin: I will give way very briefly to the hon. Gentleman, but this is the only time that I shall give way.

Andrew Bennett: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that what he has just said is nonsense? He talks about postal ballots, but his example from Birmingham has nothing to do with postal ballots. Will he address what the Conservative party said when postal voting was extended? None of the concerns that he is expressing now were expressed in any of those debates.

Bernard Jenkin: With respect, we expressed very strong concerns about conducting such a widespread so-called pilot that involved a third of the English electorate; but yes, we were open-minded about those postal pilots. We approached them in a thoroughly non-partisan manner. The Government politicised them by forcing up the number of regions. We know why they did so: they wanted to boost the turnout in Labour northern areas of the country in a very difficult election in which they got smashed even then. The problem is that the Government have been gerrymandering the process for their own political ends and even ignoring their own Electoral Commission, which they set up for the purpose of advising them.
	We have heard of plenty examples of people being disfranchised because of the sheer scale and complexity of the task of printing and distributing some 83 million pieces of paper, of ballot papers being delivered late or not at all, of incomprehensible instructions on ballot packs, incomplete ballot packs or ballot packs missing ballot papers or other vital pieces of paper. Despite all that, the Minister felt able to issue a written statement yesterday, and I shall quote from it:
	"The elections were successfully completed."—[Official Report, 21 June 2004; Vol. 422, c. 72WS.]
	Well, we have heard about spin, but that is taking spin to new lengths.
	I very much regret that I missed some of the speech by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff), but from the account of his speech given to me by my colleague, he certainly confirmed that what the Minister described as a myth is, in fact, dangerously true, given the problems in his constituency and, of course, elsewhere. The hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) described the Minister's statement as "ludicrous" in the Yorkshire Post this morning and said that the all-postal pilots led to "cash and carry democracy" in his constituency. [Interruption.] Yes, just dismiss him; he is just another Tory clone.
	However much turnout may be increased by all-postal voting, it cannot be justified if the integrity of the voting process is compromised or public confidence is undermined. That is the real lesson that needs to be learned from the pilots. This is a very serious matter because voting in person and in secret is the very essence of democracy. Even the most cynical politicians and voters approach a real ballot box with real reverence. Our voting system should not be made the plaything of a single political party.
	We have heard endlessly that the Minister's statement made great play of the increased turnout, but what evidence is there that all-postal voting is the key factor in the increase? The Government's claim that all-postal voting doubled turnout is, of course, not borne out by the facts; it is based on a completely false comparison. That point has been well made by many hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. The turnout in the pilot regions was a mere 5 per cent. higher than in the non-pilot regions. The Minister shakes his head, but that is a fact. The experiment could not be better controlled than by running it in some regions and not in others. I acknowledge that, yes, there was a bigger increase in turnout in the postal regions than in the non-postal regions, but not by 100 per cent.—not by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, the increase was in Labour areas where turnout tends to be lower, and we know why the Minister wanted to increase the turnout in those areas more quickly than in others.
	Even a Minister—the Minister for Pensions—said that to raise turnout, initiatives such as postal voting were "simply not good enough". The Secretary of State for Education and Skills admitted:
	"Generally, I don't think the experiments are the answer"
	to voter apathy, and he is a member of the Cabinet, not another Tory myth maker, as suggested by the Minister. The evidence so far suggests that once the novelty of postal voting has worn off, turnout will begin to fall away. That experience has been borne out in other countries. One thing is clear from the all-postal pilot schemes run in the elections: public confidence in the electoral system has been seriously undermined. If the Government had set out to create chaos and confusion, they could not have done a better job.
	The scope for malpractice in the regional referendums threatens to be even higher. Public apathy towards the proposals for regional assemblies means that few will care what happens to their ballot papers. There will be an opportunity for what is becoming known as "vote harvesting". The hon. Member for North Cornwall did not address that in his support for all-postal ballots. Supposing the real interest in the ballots is only, say, 20 per cent. participation, what happens to the 80 per cent. of ballot papers that are sent out willy-nilly? Unscrupulous individuals will go about collecting uncompleted ballot papers from people who are not interested in using them. Once again, the Government will send out live authorised ballot papers across the north of England like confetti. Once again, the front pages of local and national newspapers are likely to be flooded with stories of corruption, intimidation and fraud.
	The only way to avoid that situation is to restore the choice and right to vote in person at the polling station, as my hon. Friends the Members for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack), for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) and for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) said. No one should be issued with a ballot paper unless they identify themselves in person at the polling station on the day or request a postal ballot paper on the proper form. The methods and checks on voter registration and postal voting in Northern Ireland have much to commend themselves, and I ask the Minister to consider them carefully, as also recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe). The way in which elections are conducted there makes Labour's all-postal ballots look like a complete shambles organised by some petty dictatorship.
	What possible justification could there now be for conducting referendums on constitutional change, no less, by a flawed method in which people in the three referendum regions can have little, if any, confidence? The ballot box was good enough for referendums on the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, so surely it is good enough for referendums on regional assemblies. But it seems that it is not and the regional referendums must be fixed, like the turnout in the recent elections.
	Labour's proposals for elected regional assemblies have been received with the most astonishing outburst of apathy from the people of the north. The Government favour all-postal voting in the vain hope that they will boost the turnout to disguise that apathy. The Minister admitted that the result of the referendums would have to be ignored in the event of a derisory turnout, although he always refuses to identify the meaning of the word "derisory". Ministers know that they can expect few favours from the Prime Minister if they deliver yet another kicking for the Labour party so close to the general election. The decision to conduct the referendums by all-postal ballot was only announced last October, well over a year after the production of the White Paper on regional government. Why then? Because the results of the "Your Region, Your Say" sounding exercise proved to be truly derisory with just 8,500 responses from a potential population of 40 million people, and that is the basis on which the Government are going ahead with the regional referendums.
	At this point, I had intended to deliver this sentence: "The Government are determined to hold these referendums by all-postal ballot come hell or high water, simply to avoid humiliation at the ballot box", but the Minister changed the story. He generously gave a statement suggesting that the Government would consider calling off the referendums if there was sufficient doubt about the reliability of all-postal voting. That is a serious development because, as I said in an intervention on him, it calls the holding of the referendums into question, and we know that many of his colleagues are dying to bury them before the Government are humiliated again. However, would that effectively transfer the decision about whether the referendums should go ahead to the Electoral Commission? Would it advise the Government whether it is safe to proceed with them? What would happen to the information campaign? Are the Government going to spend all that money on propaganda at the taxpayer's expense only to cancel the referendums, and what will the people of the north and, indeed, the taxpayer say about that?

Nick Raynsford: We are providing information.

Bernard Jenkin: It is propaganda.
	Is the real agenda even more cynical than it is incompetent? First, the Government want to run a propaganda campaign, then test the water with a few opinion polls to find out whether the referendums are winnable, and pull them if they are not. There is a perfectly respectable alternative—hold the referendums and use a conventional ballot box. We do not want them to be cancelled. The people of the north have been promised that choice, so why not hold the referendums on the basis of a reliable system? One of the highest duties of Government is to nurture and protect our democracy, but the Labour Government are guilty of wanton dereliction of that duty. New Labour chooses political advantage at the expense of principle, corruption at the expense of security, and opportunism at the expense of public confidence. Only by restoring the rights of voters to vote in person, in secret, at the ballot box on the day of the poll can we restore confidence in our voting system. That is what the Government should do in the regional referendums in the autumn, and new Labour should stop playing fast and loose with our democracy.

Nick Raynsford: Neither the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) nor the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) helped to promote a proper and mature debate on an important subject because, in both cases, they chose to go over the top with ill-judged and inaccurate scaremongering.
	This has been a revealing debate about the Opposition's inadequacies. A range of issues has been raised and various points of view have been expressed, and I shall start with something that should command consensus. There is a large measure of agreement that the health of our democracy has been threatened—I will not go any further because, unlike the hon. Gentlemen, I do not believe in overstatement. The health of our democracy has been threatened—not undermined—by falling levels of participation and engagement, symbolised by declining turnout at elections, both national and local, which has rightly prompted expressions of concern across the political spectrum. I therefore hope that we all agree that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
	When we try to identify solutions, I grant that there are bound to be differences of opinion. Some people believe that the system of representative democracy that was entirely fit for the purpose 150 years ago is no longer as effective a means of responding to the electorate's concerns as it was in its Victorian and early 20th-century heyday. In the absence of new ways of engaging the public between elections as well as at elections, we will not succeed in reversing the trend of declining participation. Other people, particularly the Liberal Democrats, have a touching faith in the supposed redemptive powers of proportional representation, despite strong evidence to the contrary that demonstrates that declining trends of participation apply across Europe, irrespective of the electoral system, whether first past the post or proportional representation. Others believe that we need to address the means by which people express their preferences, which obviously means offering alternative voting options. The Government have been exploring such options for four years. In 2000, we ran a series of pilots that included different times and locations for voting as well as the all-postal option. In 2002, we repeated the pilots, with more extensive options for all-postal ballots, and we added electronic options, including voting by mobile phone and via the internet. In 2003 we ran an even more ambitious pilot programme with extensive all-postal and electronic voting options.
	The Electoral Commission monitored and evaluated the 2002 and 2003 pilots. It was not in existence in time to monitor the 2000 pilots. Its conclusion at the end of the process was clear: that all-postal voting had demonstrated the greatest positive impact on increasing turnout. In its report on the 2003 pilots the Electoral Commission not only concluded that all-postal pilots were very successful in substantially increasing turnout, but even more significantly, recommended that in future all-postal ballots should become the norm for local government elections—not, I hasten to add, a case of the Government seeking to impose that, as was suggested in the debate, but a proposal from the Electoral Commission.
	The Electoral Commission's report, "The Shape of Elections to Come", was published less than a year ago. What was the reaction of the official Opposition to the recommendation that all-postal voting should be the norm at all future local government elections? Did they object? Did they complain? Did they express fears about threats to the integrity of the polling process? No, they did not. They said nothing. To be fair to the official Opposition, they may have been a little distracted at the time by their plots to get rid of their then party leader, so perhaps we must allow that they were diverted.
	However, we now have a clear example of an Opposition presented with pilots in 2000, 2002 and 2003 and a recommendation from the Electoral Commission for universal all-postal elections for local authorities who raised no objections at all, but offer the House today a concoction of exaggerated and mostly unsubstantiated claims and scaremongering and an extraordinarily ill-judged attack on the Electoral Commission itself. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton told the House he did not care what the Electoral Commission says. I believe that he will deeply regret that, and I hope he will feel ashamed and embarrassed by that remark. Fortunately, that tone did not continue for much of the debate.
	The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) claimed that we were overstating the improvement in voting—

Alan Duncan: I am happy to say again that when the facts are staring us in the face that there is massive scope for electoral fraud, the possibility that there may be an inquiry does not matter. We can see the facts already. That is the point I am making.

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman did not show much respect for facts in the farrago of exaggerated claims in his speech, and it is a telling comment about him and his party that he cannot bring himself to express regret for that extraordinarily ill-judged attack on the Electoral Commission.
	The hon. Member for North Cornwall expressed the view that we were overstating the extent of improvement in voting in the all-postal pilot areas, and the hon. Member for North Essex made a similar claim, so let me give the figures. In the four pilot regions the average percentage turnout in the 1999 European elections was 20.2 per cent. This year it was 42.6 per cent.—an increase of more than 100 per cent. The increase in the total non-pilot regions—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Essex, who had a lot to say about this and claimed that we were statistically wrong, should listen, and he will realise that it is he who is wrong.
	In the total non-pilot regions, the percentage in 1999 was 25.9 per cent. This year it was 37.2 per cent., so there was an increase of about 50 per cent. in turnout in the non-pilot regions and an increase of more than 100 per cent. in the pilot regions. That clearly demonstrates that there was a significantly higher turnout in the pilot regions and puts the argument to bed.

Paul Tyler: That does not put the argument to bed at all. There was just a 5 per cent. difference in turnout. The reason why the increase in the northern areas was so great was that it was so low last time, because it was a foregone conclusion that Labour would win.

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman has not been listening. The turnout in the non-pilot regions last time was 25.9 per cent., also very low indeed, but it did not increase by anywhere near the same proportion as in the pilot regions.
	The hon. Gentleman went on a long diversion about the performance of YouGov. There seems to be a personal vendetta there, which I do not intend to follow. At the end of his speech, however, he said that he felt concerned about the number of assistance and delivery points available at the time of an all-postal referendum or election. That is a valid point and I share that concern. It was echoed by many other Members, including the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), in the debate, and I undertake to consider it further with the Electoral Commission. If there is to be a repeat of all-postal processes, we will need to consider that issue.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) expressed serious concerns about alleged abuse of postal voting in Birmingham. Of course, Birmingham was not a pilot area, which reinforces the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), who said that any problems that may exist with postal voting are not unique to electoral pilots, but apply to postal voting wherever it exists. As a country, we have made the option of postal voting available for a very long time, for good reasons. It is important that any allegation such as those that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath raised are reported and investigated. I fully share his concern that proper safeguards against fraud should be in place, but it is also important that we should be careful not to overstate the problem or give any impression, whether intentionally or not, that particular sections of our community are more prone than others to behave in a fraudulent or corrupt way.
	The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe) expressed concerns about the election register and its integrity. Over many years, there have been the sort of experiences that she has described in respect of electoral registration officers providing a review of the names on the register and significantly reducing the numbers. That is an obvious and important safeguard against people being incorrectly registered, often because they have been allowed to remain on the register for longer than they should have done. In some cases, that happens for good reasons, such as when there was no evidence that they had moved. In other cases, it can happen through a lack of proper diligence. The hon. Lady raised an important point, and it is right that safeguards on registration should be in place.
	The Electoral Commission has proposed a change in the electoral registration system to individual registration to improve security. There is merit in the principle, but as the contribution from Northern Ireland highlighted, there is a worry that moving to different systems, including individual registration, can mean that a number of people who should genuinely be on the register are left off it, for a variety of other reasons. We need to look at that issue carefully, but there is merit in the proposal. We are also looking with the Electoral Commission and others at means of securing a nationally consistent register, although it will be locally compiled, to ensure that problems such as dual registration can be picked up and that safeguards and checks against them can be put in place.
	In a rather wide-ranging speech covering a lot of issues that I do not have time to deal with, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) raised doubts about the all-postal ballots, but failed to comment on the fact that the turnout in his region was the highest in percentage of any region in England. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) made some common-sense observations on factors affecting turnout, reminding us that we should not rush for simplistic answers. His concern about people not being able to vote in person was echoed by others, and I have already commented on that issue.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) made a series of well-informed observations as Chairman of the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning and Local Government, which has conducted a thorough inquiry. I appreciate his support for pilots, and agree that their purpose is to test what works and what does not. We should not necessarily replicate all the features of previous pilots. As he rightly said, there is a need for a full evaluation. I would like to respond to the other points that have been made, but I do not have time.
	Unlike the official Opposition, this Government are committed to tackling the problem of disengagement and low participation in the democratic process. We have piloted options for new ways of voting, and we have proposed constitutional reforms to bring power closer to the people. This autumn, we are pledged to give the people of the three northern regions the option of a vote in a referendum on whether to establish elected regional assemblies. We have proposed that that should be done by all-postal ballot in order to maximise participation, and that announcement was welcomed by the Electoral Commission.
	To meet our commitment to hold those referendums, however, we need to move forward with the necessary orders before the House rises for the summer recess. At the same time, we recognise the concerns of those who have questioned whether it is appropriate to approve the orders before the Electoral Commission has reported on this summer's pilots. Of course, there are differences between a referendum and an election. In a referendum, there are no candidates seeking election, and for that reason, the risk of fraud is felt by some to be less. Nevertheless, we take the views of the Electoral Commission very seriously, and we are prepared to give a clear undertaking not to proceed with all-postal referendums as planned if it produces convincing evidence leading to the conclusion that it would be unsafe to do so.
	That is the proper reaction of a Government who are committed to encouraging participation in the democratic process and equally committed to protecting the integrity of the balloting process. By contrast, the Opposition have pursued a crudely opportunistic stance that deserves to be rejected by this House with contempt.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	The House divided: Ayes 184, Noes 308.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to
	Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House recognises that the all postal pilots in June 2004 were part of a process of testing alternative voting mechanisms for the benefit of making voting easier and more convenient for electors; further recognises that turnout in European elections had fallen to its lowest ever level in 1999 and that all postal pilots assisted in making the 2004 European election turnout the UK's highest ever; welcomes the fact that voter participation for the European elections in the pilot regions more than doubled in 2004 compared with 1999; believes that allegations of fraud have been reported disproportionately and that there is currently no evidence to show that all postal ballots are more susceptible to fraud than traditional elections; recognises that further reforms will be necessary to widen participation and engagement in the electoral system; and further believes that the integrity of elections and referendums, including the proposed referendums on elected regional assemblies, is adversely affected by declining turnout which puts in jeopardy the democratic mandate.

NHS Recruitment and Retention

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I must tell the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Andrew Lansley: I beg to move,
	That this House recognises the central role of NHS professionals in delivering high quality healthcare through the NHS; notes the need for substantial increases in NHS staffing to meet future demand for healthcare; further notes that the levels of bureaucracy, red tape and imposed targets within the NHS demoralise NHS staff; regrets the problems in the implementation of the consultant and GP contracts; further regrets the delay in progress on 'Agenda for Change'; expresses its concern over staff shortages in general practice, hospital specialties, nursing, especially community nursing, midwifery, radiography and biomedical sciences; is alarmed at the extent of recruitment of health professionals from developing countries which are unable to sustain the loss of such staff; and urges the Government to give the NHS the freedoms and incentives needed to support a growing workforce.
	This week we will have a series of debates—some in this Chamber and some outside—on the national health service and health care in this country. I hope that we can start with a shared perspective, which is that no serious progress would be possible, however much we might wish it, however much we might invest in the national health service, however much we might introduce choice in the national health service, and however much we might introduce competition in the provision of the national health service, without the skill, hard work and commitment of NHS professionals and health care professionals generally.
	Today is our chance to show that we value the work of NHS doctors, nurses and health care professionals generally. That matter is not something to which I have turned as part of my current Front-Bench responsibilities. I hope that the House will be aware, and I know that the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), is aware, that as a Back Bencher, I secured a debate in Westminster Hall in November 2002 on nursing and nurses' pay and conditions. That was the only debate on those subjects in this Parliament so far—the previous one was in 1999.
	As a preface to our discussions, it is a pity that we do not debate more regularly pay and conditions, the prospects for recruitment and retention and the contribution made by NHS professionals to the NHS. One of the things that the Audit Commission's survey of NHS professionals made clear was the importance of the extent to which those professionals feel that they are valued by the Government and the public, and the fact that the lack of understanding that they are valued is one of the reasons why people leave the NHS. It is therefore right that we demonstrate that they are valued, that we do that together, and, although it may not be easy to achieve this afternoon, that we do it in a spirit of consensus.
	There are 1.3 million staff in the NHS—they represent one in seven of all public sector employees and about one in 20 of the whole UK work force. It is vital that we discuss that work force. It is not a subject to which the Government have given time, so I hope that it will be recognised that it is right for the Opposition to give some of our time to understanding and reflecting on that work force.
	We will need to discuss a number of issues, and I want to start, as I did previously, with nurses. The congress of the Royal College of Nursing met in early May—just over a month ago—and some information was presented on how nurses feel about the NHS. It was interesting to note, for example, that only 30 per cent. of nurses believed that the number of permanent nursing staff had increased over the past four years at their hospital. Clearly, something is not happening to make nurses perceive that the front-line resources are getting through. When we asked doctors the same question, two thirds said that they did not perceive that the resources that they heard were going into the NHS were getting to the front line. It is vital that they do see that happening.

Jonathan R Shaw: The hon. Gentleman said that "we" asked doctors? Is that "we" the Conservative party?

Andrew Lansley: It was we, the Conservative party, who asked doctors. We did it through a reputable research company and published the results, so that seems perfectly reasonable to me.
	On the issues relating to nursing, we know that during the past 10 years the average age of nurses has increased from 37 to 41. We know that half the rise in the number of nurses registered in the UK is the result of overseas recruitment, and there are issues about the sustainability—[Interruption.] If the Secretary of State has something that he wishes to tell us, no doubt he will intervene.

John Reid: Yes, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the increase in age. A large number of nurses came back to work in the health service when they got a new Government who were putting in the investment, giving the support needed and increasing the number of nurses.

Andrew Lansley: I welcome the increase in the number of nurses. It is absolutely right that we should attract nurses back into the national health service. If the Secretary of State has read my speech from November 2002, he will know the precise reasons that I presented for that. I made it clear that Addenbrooke's, a major employer of nurses in my constituency, would need "Agenda for Change", that a reflection of the valuation of nurses should be considered by the pay review bodies—which the Government's evidence to the pay review bodies had not sufficiently reflected—and that Addenbrooke's would need to make changes such as improving working lives. Addenbrooke's is a model employer in the ways in which it has addressed the issues in improving working lives, such as non-discrimination, supporting staff, opposing harassment and putting together family-friendly policies and child-care arrangements for nurses. I do not dispute any of that. That is exactly where we want to go, but the Government should not believe that the overseas recruitment of nurses is a sustainable basis on which to undertake the expansion of the nursing work force in the NHS in years to come.

Peter Pike: Will the hon. Gentleman recognise that prior to 1997—in my first 14 years in this House—I continually fought here and in my constituency against hospital closures, the reduction in the number of beds and massive cuts in the national health service, year after year? I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman, in what he is now saying, fails to remember what his party did when in office.

Andrew Lansley: What the hon. Gentleman says is interesting. We are today talking about the work force, and also about what can be achieved in the NHS. We have had an increase in the number of nurses and in the number of doctors. It is interesting to note that under the previous Conservative Government, in the seven years leading up to 1997, the number of consultants in the NHS increased by 30 per cent. In the seven years since 1997, it has increased by 34 per cent., so to a large extent the trends in numbers of doctors have been very similar during those periods.
	I will accept that matters in relation to nurses are different, but one of the problems with which the Secretary of State and his colleagues have wrestled—The Sunday Times illustrated this by its reporting of leaked documents from inside the Government—is what appears to be a substantial reduction in the productivity of the NHS. The Secretary of State knows that changes in working hours and in NHS structures have meant that although there has been a 14 per cent. increase in the number of nurses, on a whole-time equivalent basis, in recent years, we have had only a 5 per cent. increase in activity in the NHS.
	On increase in activity, let us look at finished consultant episodes. The Minister of State has been good enough to respond to a question that I put on finished consultant episodes, which are a measure of in-patient activity in hospitals, and include day cases. Between 1990–91 and 1995–96, a five-year period before the 1997 election, there was an increase in finished consultant episodes from 8.8 million to 11.07 million—about 2.25 million additional finished consultant episodes. In the five years from 1997–98 to 2002–03, the number rose from 11.5 million to 12.76 million, an increase of 1.25 million episodes. So, over a five-year period, whereas there was an increase of 2.25 million under a Conservative Government during the period of the internal market reforms, there was an increase of 1.25 million under the present Government. That has resulted not from a reduction in the number of nurses—the numbers of nurses, consultants and doctors was increasing—but because, simply in order to stand still in the NHS in the light of all the additional impositions, changes in working hours and contractual arrangements, about 10 per cent. of the increase went into adjustment. The level of increased activity was, in fact, very small.

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman seems to be tip-toeing around the most important figures, which are performance indicators in respect of nursing. At the moment, the number of nurses employed within the NHS is heading rapidly towards 400,000—an increase of almost a quarter since 1 May 1997. Is it not the case that, when the hon. Gentleman was wringing his hands in Westminster Hall at the plight of nursing, the Government were ringing the advertising agencies to recruit even more of that valuable resource to our prized national health service?

Andrew Lansley: The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a partisan point—[Interruption.] These are the Houses of Parliament and it is our responsibility to promote the interests of the NHS. What I am doing now is promoting the national health service's interest in recruiting and retaining more nurses. It will be good if we can reach 400,000 nurses. Why not? It will be one of the benefits of introducing the changes that I sought to encourage in "Agenda for Change", but we cannot do so simply on the basis of overseas recruitment. The Royal College of Nursing made it clear that 10,000 people from third-world nations registered to work as nurses in the UK over the two years leading up to 2002–03 and that many of them came from the Philippines, South Africa and India, but argued that it was unsustainable for us to deprive developing countries of that number of nurses when they were trying to meet their own health care needs.

Henry Bellingham: My hon. Friend will be aware that the Queen Elizabeth hospital in my constituency, which also serves the constituents of my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), has embarked on a policy of recruiting a large number of Philippino nurses. They make excellent nurses, but, as my hon. Friend rightly says, that policy is not sustainable, which is why we need much more focus on retention and far more imagination on the part of the Government in their attempts to retain hard-working nurses who are leaving the NHS.

Andrew Lansley: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He is absolutely right. He and I know—as do Government Members—that when recruitment from the Philippines was first taking place, it was done in conjunction with the Philippines Government on the basis that their nurses were so good. That has been my own experience in hospitals in my constituency. They make extremely good nurses. I was talking the other day to the chief executive of another hospital, who endorsed that view. However, there comes a point at which our recruitment from such countries simply cannot go on.
	I want to make some progress and we have only a couple of hours. I want to continue and finish my speech, but I also want other hon. Members to have the opportunity to contribute.
	I should say more about "Agenda for Change". I recall talking to hospital nurses who were engaged in the process of preparing for that agenda, and I know the enormous effort that was required. It was a valuable effort, but they were working to a definite timetable. When I spoke to them—in late April, if I remember correctly—they believed that they were aiming for October. I can only endorse what amounts to deep irritation on the part of the RCN, which is putting in so much effort to implement "Agenda for Change" for the nursing profession, that the Secretary of State told its conference that the Government were aiming for October but put the date back to December only a few days later. I hope that we will hear why that was necessary and what can be done to offset the very demoralising effect on nurses.
	On consultant contracts, every consultant that I have spoken to believes that the Government operated on the basis that consultants were skiving off in order to go out on to the golf course. I do not believe that that is so. I do not suppose that Ministers believe that it is, but that is what consultants think. They also think that the proposal is being implemented in a way that is completely mad.
	Consultants' job plans show that, on average, each does about 12.5 programmed activities a week. Hospitals are supposed to get 10.8 programmed activities, but the primary care trusts are not necessarily passing them through. Perhaps the Minister will tell the House how many PCTs pass through the money that the Department says it has given them for the contract. In any case, consultants are as a result being constrained to 11 programmed activities a week, or even only 10. The contract will mean that consultants will be paid more to do less.
	Alternatively, consultants will not sign the contract. Their attitude will be, "If the Government are going to treat me as though I were a production-line worker, that is how I will behave." If consultants have to clock on and clock off, they will behave accordingly. That is not good enough.
	In an Opposition day debate a short while ago, I asked the Minister about implementing contracts for staff and associated specialists. Happily, he has made it clear that contracts should now begin to be negotiated, but how soon will that happen? The conclusion reached by the pay review body has demoralised staff and associated specialists. They were linked to the consultants who are not signing up to the new contract, and they are therefore not due to get any substantial increase.
	GPs believe that the contract has been designed to reduce their work load. I do not quite see it that way, and it would be interesting to know whether the Minister does. It seemed to me that the aim was to enable GPs to manage their work more effectively and to use a range of specialists to do so, in a framework that delivered better care to people with chronic diseases. I hope that GPs will see the contract in those terms, but communication with them has been too ineffective for that to be the case.
	I am seriously worried about the extent to which NHS Direct seems to be gearing up to take over responsibility for out-of-hours services. The result will be that those services will no longer be GP-led, but will be delivered by NHS Direct. The Secretary of State is supposed to be reviewing NHS Direct, among other bodies. However, the advertisements that are now appearing show that it is looking for a chief operating officer and a medical director, as well as directors of finance, service development, nursing, corporate affairs and communications, human resources and of information and communications technology. It is all expansion in NHS Direct at the moment. A reading of the Estates Gazette shows that, across the country, NHS Direct is buying twice the amount of space that it has already in order to accommodate its new size. That shows where growth is taking place in the NHS, although it may be happening nowhere else.
	I turn now to some specific specialities. People in the NHS understand that we must know where the constraints are before we can deliver a better service. For example, we need twice as many neurologists as we have at present. Relative to population size, we have a quarter as many neurologists as France has. We need to double the number available here if we are to meet National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines on multiple sclerosis, or on the standard of care required for Parkinson's disease.
	On radiology, 80 per cent. of hospitals covered by the recent National Audit Office report cited lack of skilled staff as a constraint. Vacancy rates for diagnostic and therapeutic radiographers have risen.
	Since 1996, the number of midwives has risen by only 186, which severely constrains our ability to provide the necessary choice to people seeking maternity care. For example, some hospitals—one of them is in my constituency—cannot provide a midwife-led unit simply because they cannot recruit the number of midwives needed.

John Hutton: The hon. Gentleman just said that we needed twice as many neurologists in the NHS. I understand from The Independent and other newspapers that the proposals that he is about to announce mean that there would be no national targets for the NHS—including work force targets. Will the hon. Gentleman explain that contradiction?

Andrew Lansley: Yes I will, and I am grateful for the question. Our proposals for the care of people with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease, for instance, are based on NICE guidelines. The NICE guidelines for multiple sclerosis were published last November. At the moment, NICE produces guidelines, but no one is under a requirement to implement them. We need at the same time to see where the capacity constraints will be. That includes things like diagnosis. But then it will be the responsibility of primary care trusts to commission that care. This is not elective surgery; this is chronic disease management.

John Reid: So there will be no targets?

Andrew Lansley: No, there will be a responsibility to commission care. If hospitals know that they have commissioners seeking the delivery of a service to a standard, they can put in place the necessary consultant posts.

John Reid: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Lansley: Just a moment. Under the next Conservative Government, it will be the responsibility of the Department of Health to expand the NHS work force.
	I have not read the story in The Independent, but if it has reported our intentions accurately, the story will be that we do not believe in imposing targets on NHS hospitals and general practices. We are in the business of imposing targets on ourselves, not on the NHS—

John Hutton: What targets?

Andrew Lansley: Public health targets, for example. The Minister was not here for yesterday's debate. Pretty much every kind of target that ought to be imposed on the Government for public health and the work force is a target for the Department of Health, and the Department must take responsibility for meeting it. Changing the culture of the NHS means doing away with targets and performance management. Such a system is an attempt to run the NHS from the Secretary of State's desk instead of making responsibility lie where it ought—in hospitals that respond to the needs of patients. That is where performance management should be.

John Reid: Presumably, that includes the targets that have reduced the scandalous two-year waiting times to nine months, and will reduce them to six months next year. That target will go as well, and we shall have unlimited waiting times.
	I wish to understand the recruitment figures. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that what he is saying is that if there is a shortage of midwives and radiographers nowadays, it is the fault of this Government but it would not be the fault of a future Conservative Government because they would have no targets for the number of midwives or radiographers in the first place?

Andrew Lansley: No, the Secretary of State is wrong about that.

John Reid: rose—

Andrew Lansley: I will answer the question. The Secretary of State cannot intervene before I have answered his point.

John Reid: Will there be any targets or not?

Andrew Lansley: I shall tell the Secretary of State. I have said it once, and I say it again: we will not impose targets on the NHS, but there are responsibilities for the Department of Health, and they include stimulating the—[Interruption.] I do not know what Labour Members find so difficult to comprehend. The point is that it will be for the Department of Health and the Conservative Government to manage their own responsibilities, and one of our responsibilities will be to create the circumstances in which there is a volume increase in the work force—doctors, dentists and nurses—available to the NHS. That does not mean that we need to impose performance targets on hospitals. The star rating system sets down 44 targets. None of them is a work force expansion target. If we abolish the star rating system, it does not mean that we have abolished the responsibility of the Department of Health to increase the work force of the NHS.

John Reid: The hon. Gentleman has just spent the past 10 minutes criticising the Government for not reaching the target for the number of nurses, midwives and radiographers. Is he telling us that he will not have such a target for the number of radiographers and midwives? Or will he have such an objective for the NHS? Is he saying, in other words, that while we are in power, to have such an objective number is to have a target, but when he is in power, it will be left entirely to the local hospital to decide how many midwives and radiographers it employs?

Andrew Lansley: The Secretary of State has demonstrated three times that he does not understand. It is perfectly clear that—[Interruption.] I shall try once more and then I shall move on. We will have a responsibility as the next Conservative Government to expand the work force available to the NHS.

John Reid: To what level?

Andrew Lansley: As I have just said, in order to supply the diagnostic resources and personnel that NICE guidelines require, we would need substantially to increase the number of neurologists.

John Reid: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Lansley: The Secretary of State cannot keep intervening.
	In order for that to happen, we will have a Department of Health with responsibility to make available additional medical manpower to the NHS. It will then be up to hospitals to decide the extent to which they appoint additional consultants in order to provide that service, but the service will be set up.

John Reid: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Lansley: No, I have finished now and the Secretary of State can sit down.

John Reid: This is absolutely—

Andrew Lansley: The Secretary of State can sit down because only one person can speak at a time, and I am not giving way.

John Reid: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Secretary of State must resume—

John Reid: He is running from—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Secretary of State must realise the position. He takes a vigorous part in debates and that is in order, but it is not in order to interrupt if the hon. Gentleman who has the Floor does not wish to give way.

Andrew Lansley: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is a short debate and the Secretary of State is trying to prevent other people from contributing to it. I shall not now have time to talk about the lack of dentists or the further issues relating to overseas recruitment. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) will be able to expand on those subjects when he winds up.
	The Government have considered several ways to try to increase the NHS work force in the future. They have considered trying to increase overseas recruitment; stimulating the return to work of previous staff by improving working lives; and increasing the supply of training places. Those are important, but one needs also to consider why people leave the NHS and why they change jobs—staff turnover is high. The Audit Commission considered that and the reasons include bureaucracy, poor resources, a lack of autonomy, a sense of being undervalued by the Government and the public, and unfair pay. We need to address all those issues, and the Government need to understand that bureaucracy and the lack of autonomy are seen as part of the reasons why people do not stay in their jobs in the NHS, why we do not see the return to work that we should among nurses and doctors and why we cannot recruit and retain as we would wish. We can attack those issues. We can cut the levels of bureaucracy and we propose to do so. We can give greater autonomy and freedom to the NHS to provide services and to respond to patients.
	NHS professionals are valued by this House, and they should be valued, for the clinical care they give, for the choices they make and for the responsibility they take on—nurses, for example, are taking on greater responsibilities across the NHS—and they should be trusted and given the autonomy they want. We should set the NHS free. It will be our job to do so, and to give people the right to choose.

John Hutton: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"welcomes the Government's record extra investment in the National Health Service which has resulted in increases of 19,400 more doctors and 67,500 more nurses since 1997; supports the extra investment in training which has increased the intake of medical school students by 61 per cent. and nurse training students by 53 per cent. since 1997; notes that over one million NHS staff will benefit from improved terms and conditions; recognises that the international recruitment of healthcare professionals has already made a significant impact on the delivery of NHS services; notes the Government's commitment to ethical international recruitment, with its robust Code of Practice, the first of its kind in the world, ensuring that NHS organisations do not recruit staff from developing countries without the agreement of their government; and welcomes the sharing and transfer of experience and ideas that international recruitment brings to the health service."
	I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) on his elevation to the shadow Cabinet. I hope that he will not mind if I say how sorry I am that the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) will no longer be joining our debates on health, for the simple reason that he spent most of his time in his job as a shadow public services spokesman dumping the health policies that he inherited from the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). We all hoped that the hon. Member for South Suffolk would carry on a little longer. To give him credit, he eventually scrapped the top-up schools voucher, but he had not got round to scrapping the Tories' top-up hospital voucher—the NHS passport—under which a patient's access to treatment would depend not on their clinical need but on the amount of money in their pocket.

Jonathan R Shaw: My right hon. Friend will recall that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) mentioned several issues that arose from the conference of the Royal College of Nursing. Does my right hon. Friend recall that more than 90 per cent. of nurses at that conference voted against the passport to pain proposed by the Opposition?

John Hutton: Yes, I intended to mention that shortly. I suspect that the hon. Member for South Suffolk remembers that even more clearly than I do.
	The Leader of the Opposition has now confirmed that they intend to keep the policy of top-up patient vouchers, under which people have 50 per cent. of costs met by the NHS and make up the difference from their own resources.

Andrew Lansley: When something wrong is put on the record, it stays there, so to put the Minister right, under our proposals, which we shall announce shortly, no NHS patient will have to pay anything to receive NHS treatment.

John Hutton: I know that, but that policy will provide patients with an exit visa from the national health service. I shall come on to that point in a second. We need to be clear about those vouchers, because they affect the issues that we are discussing. The policy will put ability to pay ahead of clinical need, and it will cost the national health service more than £1 billion to finance.
	It should come as a surprise to no one that the only aspiration that lot have—the only objective the Tory top-up voucher is designed to serve—is to persuade people that the only way to get faster treatment is to leave the national health service, to leave the public sector altogether and to go private. It will not provide the same level of choice and opportunity to all NHS patients but will offer more choice to those who can afford it. It concedes that the fastest treatment will be available only to those who can afford it, and only in the private sector.
	Under the Tories, it will be money that talks; it will be money that guarantees access to the fastest treatment, not the degree of pain and suffering that a patient might be enduring. What a contemptible policy: fundamentally flawed, fundamentally unfair—a typical Tory policy.

Henry Bellingham: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider two points? First, if one of my constituents who is waiting for a hip operation decides to use the voucher scheme—to go to the BUPA hospital in Norwich, for example—she will free up an NHS place. It is as simple as that. Secondly, will he comment on the fact that a record number of people are having to go private to get their operations done in time?

John Hutton: No, I very much doubt whether that would be the case. On costs, typically, the hon. Gentleman's constituent would have to find several thousand pounds from their own resources to fund that treatment, taking money directly from the NHS. Furthermore, it is very likely that the surgeon who treated the patient would also be an NHS surgeon.

David Taylor: Under Conservative policies, if people switched from the NHS to a private hospital, would it not be almost certain that NHS doctors and nurses would have to be sacked? Has my right hon. Friend made any estimate of the numbers that might be involved?

John Hutton: We have estimated the cost of the patients passport as £1 billion. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, who is keen to match our spending on the NHS, would clearly have to find that money from somewhere else. The truth about the patients passport is that the policy has not been thought through; it is fundamentally unfair and it will discriminate against ordinary NHS patients.

Helen Jones: Does my right hon. Friend find it as odd as I do that in a debate in which the official Opposition have said how much they value NHS staff they are still promoting a policy that states that those NHS staff cannot deliver the kind of service they want? In fact, NHS staff have delivered, and are delivering, improvements because we have put in the resources. What would my right hon. Friend say to the students I met recently at the school of nursing and midwifery in Warrington, all of whom are enthusiastically waiting to go into jobs in the NHS, about the value that the Opposition put on them now?

John Hutton: I think those student midwives have already made up their minds about the policy of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire and about what a Conservative Government would do to the national health service; they simply have to remember what the Conservatives did to the NHS when they were in office.

Andrew Turner: The right hon. Gentleman did not answer—or rather he answered wrongly—my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham)—[Interruption.] The Minister answered my hon. Friend wrongly because he said that he did not believe that someone who goes private, and thereby ceases to be on the waiting list, was freeing up a space in the national health service. Can he explain how someone who has already had their hip operation privately could use the space?

John Hutton: I want to return to the patients passport in a moment, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be able to follow the logic of the case that I make.
	The main thrust of the attack on the Government made by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire relates to recruitment and retention of NHS staff. I should like to tell him and his hon. Friends some of the facts that he failed to cover. When we came to office six years ago, investment in the NHS was being cut in real terms—it was falling. The NHS did not have enough front-line staff. As a result, waiting times were rising. The number of nurses in training, about which the hon. Gentleman has spoken eloquently, had been falling and was less than it had been in 1992. As a direct result, the NHS was short on both investment and capacity. It had failed to invest properly not only in the buildings, equipment and drugs that it needed, but in its staff as well. In the NHS, our staff are our most precious asset.
	In 1997, the starting salary for a newly qualified nurse was £12,000, and NHS porters earned £7,000 a year—pitiful salaries, given the responsibilities of those staff. Training budgets were falling. There was no coherent or visible strategy for recruiting and retaining front-line NHS staff. Terms and conditions of employment, which the hon. Gentleman has also spoken about today, were antiquated and fragmented. There was only a handful of NHS staff nurseries. Pay awards from the pay review bodies—again, he referred to them—were implemented in stages, further diminishing the value of those pay rises to NHS staff. That was the legacy of the Conservative Administration.

Peter Pike: My right hon. Friend may not know that, when I asked a question before the Conservatives lost office in 1997, they did not know how many GPs were due to retire in each area of the country, so they could not recruit and train enough GPs because they did not have the records in the system.

John Hutton: I am not surprised; and we need to remember the Conservatives' legacy. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire has not presented any coherent case today. People are entitled to judge an Opposition not just on what they claim that their policies will do, but on their record in office as well. Undermined by his record in office, as he was today, he made his case with no conviction and no credibility. He has no serious alternative to the policies that we are pursuing.

Gillian Shephard: The Minister has now begun to talk about recruitment and retention. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) has said that he welcomes the increased number of nurses in the NHS, as indeed we all do. The Minister will accept, of course, that early intervention and public health are among the Government's priorities. Will he explain therefore what policy priority he and the Government put on the recruitment and retention of school nurses? Will also explain why one team in my constituency is working at 42 per cent. of its capacity? The reason cannot be the number of nurses, or recruitment or retention, because both are fine, according to the Minister, so what is it?

John Hutton: I do not dispute for a second that it would be a good idea if more school nurses were working in the NHS and our schools. That is an excellent idea. My only difficulty with the right hon. Lady's suggestion—I have a lot of respect for her views—is that she has not fully understood the policies that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire has been outlining today.

Gillian Shephard: Will the Minister give way?

John Hutton: I will give way if the right hon. Lady will give me a second. In essence, she is asking to set a target or to quantify the extra number of school nurses that she wants. I am trying to say that we should like to see more school nurses working in the NHS, and the extra investment that we are putting into the NHS will help us to do so.

Andrew Lansley: Perhaps the Minister would care to explain something. If he turns to page 98 of the Department's annual report—I do not have it with me, but I remember it—he will see the number of episodes of care provided by a range of community services. He will see that the number of health visitor episodes of care was 3.6 million in 1997–98, and that that figure has gone down to 2.9 million in the latest year. The number of district nurse episodes of care has gone down from 2.2 million to 1.9 million. That is a 1 million reduction in the number of episodes of care provided in the community by health visitors and district nurses. The Minister talks about community nursing services, such as school nursing services, but they have declined over the past seven years.

John Hutton: As I keep saying to the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), we are investing significantly more in primary care, and I shall come on to what that means. There has been a slight fall in the number of community district nurses, which is regrettable, but that has to be set alongside a significant increase in the total number of nurses working in primary care. Something like 750,000 more activities have been undertaken in primary care than was the case a few years ago, so we are seeing a shift from secondary to primary.

Gillian Shephard: The Minister has explained that more nurses are in the work force. My question to him was this, and I hope that he can now answer it: are the falling numbers in the school nursing service a result of a lack of a policy priority placed on their services by his Government?

John Hutton: That is not a reasonable conclusion to reach from the figures suggested by the right hon. Lady. If she is patient, some of the Government's policies and proposals will become clearer.
	During the Conservative party's period in office, it is inescapable—this is the only conclusion that the vast majority of the people of this country would recognise—that the NHS was run down and neglected. It had been allowed to fall seriously behind compared with health care systems in Europe and around the world. The idea that the period between 1979 and 1997 somehow represented a high watermark in the history of the national health service is totally risible. That is not how people remember things. It is not how anyone who worked in the national health service during that time would recall those years. People have not forgotten what the Tories did to the NHS. That is why we need to keep the facts clearly in mind when we consider the criticisms that have been made of this Government's record on the NHS.
	In short, the NHS had neither the investment it needed nor the political support it required from the previous, Conservative Government to have had any chance whatsoever of meeting the health care needs of the British people. It is for those reasons that this Labour Government have followed a different policy on the NHS. They cut investment in real terms; we are increasing it. They subsidised private health insurance; we put that money back into the NHS. They let waiting times rise; we are ensuring that they come down. They cut the number of nurses in training; we are increasing them at a faster rate than at any time in the history of the NHS. We are investing in new and improved terms and conditions for NHS staff; they did precisely the opposite.
	In the past five years, 16 major new hospitals have been built and a further 10 are in the process of being built. In the last five years of the Conservative Government, they only managed to get two major new hospitals completed. At the same time, we have substantially improved more than 2,000 GP premises, and nearly 300 new primary care centres have been completed. That is because of the investment in the NHS, now rising at its fastest ever rate.
	Spending will rise from £33 billion in 1997 to more than £58 billion this year. It will continue rising until 2008, when we will be spending £90 billion on our national health service. Real-terms spending in the NHS is increasing at very nearly three times the rate achieved under the previous Conservative Government. This extra investment has led to a 22 per cent. increase in the number of hospital operations and an 18 per cent. rise in the number of out-patient appointments. New drugs are becoming available more quickly. We have new services in primary care, such as NHS Direct and walk-in centres, treating and advising millions of people every year. The number of MRI scanners has doubled. CT scanners have increased by 60 per cent. We are doing hundreds of thousands more diagnostic tests every year. Most importantly of all, waiting times for an operation have halved. Twice as many people can now see their GP within two days as could in 1997.

John Baron: The Minister paints a rosy picture, and there is no denying that there have been some good improvements in the NHS, but he mentioned waiting times. Does he accept that despite the massive increase in expenditure, average waiting times during the past four years have risen from something like 90 days to 99 days, and those are the Department of Health's own figures?

John Hutton: That is not the case. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman and set him straight on that.

John Baron: I am afraid that it is the case, because those were the Department's own figures. Will the Minister address the issue and explain why average waiting times have risen—a fact admitted by Sir Nigel Crisp?

John Hutton: Let me write to the hon. Gentleman and sort that out.
	There is no doubt that waiting times are falling, not rising, as they did under the Conservatives. Death rates from cancer and coronary heart disease are falling more quickly here than in any other country in Europe. The new investment going into the NHS is making a huge difference, which the Opposition refuse to acknowledge for political reasons, as that simply would not happen under a Conservative Government. We are investing for the future as well. The NHS training budget has doubled since 1997, and it is money well spent. It has allowed us to increase the numbers of doctors in training by over 8,000. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire made a claim about the number of NHS consultants, and compared the increase in their numbers in the past five years with that in the last five years of the Conservative Government. We need to look at the totality of NHS doctors. In the last five years of the Tory Government there was a 12 per cent. increase in the number of NHS doctors. Since 1997, the number of NHS doctors has increased by 23 per cent.—double the rate under the previous Government.

Andrew Murrison: I would be grateful to know how the Minister defines a consultant, because the British Orthopaedic Trainees Association, which came to see me this morning, was concerned that his figures included nurse consultants and consultant podiatric surgeons, who are not medically qualified. To what extent do his figures include such practitioners?

John Hutton: We do not include nurse consultants or podiatric surgeons in our definition of consultants because they are not medically qualified doctors.
	We have increased the number of doctors in training by over 8,000. Places at medical school have increased by 60 per cent.—the largest increase since the NHS was established. Four new medical schools have opened since 1997. No new medical schools were opened in the entire period of the Conservative Administration. Since the extra places at medical school came on line in 1999, nearly 5,500 more students have entered medical school in England. The extra investment has allowed us to increase the numbers of GPs in training by two thirds. The number of nurses entering training has increased by more than 50 per cent. Training places for therapists have increased by nearly 70 per cent. The numbers entering training as radiographers have doubled since 1997.

David Taylor: Does the Minister share my dismay and astonishment at the attitude of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) towards the difficulty of filling vacancies for midwives and radiographers, as he did not offer any new commitments? Will midwives throughout the land not be disappointed by the delayed delivery of commitment to the NHS, and will not radiographers see right through him?

John Hutton: I do not want to labour the point about midwives, but my hon. Friend has highlighted a fundamental conundrum at the heart of the policies set out by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. I shall return to his policy of no new targets for the NHS when I conclude. The record that I have described on recruitment and retention is one that the Opposition simply cannot match.

Helen Jones: Does my right hon. Friend agree that when talking about NHS staff, in addition to doctors, nurses and associated therapists we should include the vast numbers of support staff, such as cleaners, health care assistants and porters, who offer the NHS a valuable service, whose chances at work have been vastly improved under this Government and whom the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) failed even to mention?

John Hutton: That is a telling point, as 0.25 million more people work for the NHS today than in 1997, and many of those jobs are in the support roles to which my hon. Friend referred. Not only are there more jobs, but a better training infrastructure is in place to support skills development, with individual learning accounts being properly invested in and supported by central Government for the first time.
	We will know one thing for sure after today's debate. The Tories have no plans whatsoever for recruiting more doctors or nurses. We have set out our plans for recruiting more doctors and nurses up to 2008. What are their plans? They either do not have any—I suspect that that is the case—or they will not tell us. Why not? Do they plan to recruit more or fewer than we have set out? If they cannot answer any of these questions today, their attack on the Government's record can only be described as a mixture of pure opportunism and naked hypocrisy. The Opposition complain about staff shortages, but they have no plans whatever to address them. How utterly pathetic.
	Despite the record increases in staff numbers and in staff training, it is still true that there are many skills shortages in parts of the NHS. There are several reasons for that. Some of the shortage is due to long-term historic under-investment, some of it is down to the fact that we are trying to expand our services and therefore our capacity as quickly as possible, and there is always a time lag between the investment that is made in training and staff development and that capacity becoming available to the NHS.
	That is why we have recruited extra staff, particularly nursing staff, from other countries, but we have done so with a clear view of the importance of protecting the health care systems in developing countries. No other developed country has taken the steps that we have taken to ensure that international recruitment is conducted fairly and ethically. The code of conduct that we introduced in 2001 set out clear principles and priorities.
	Only recruitment agencies that sign up to the code can be used by the NHS for international recruitment. More than 170 agencies have so far done so. When there is evidence that the code is not being complied with, we have taken action to remove those agencies from the approved list. The Department monitors compliance through data supplied by the international recruitment co-ordinators based in each strategic health authority. Two agencies have so far been removed from the list for non-compliance. I have arranged for a copy of the code to be placed in the Library.
	We have sought Government-to-Government agreements on international recruitment with Indonesia, the Philippines, Spain and India. A separate agreement with South Africa was signed last year. That focused on creating opportunities for health care staff in both countries to undertake limited placements in each other's health care systems. I hope the first staff will begin their placements later this year.
	We will recruit internationally only with the agreement of the host country, and we will always respect and act on its wishes. We have a clear view of which countries we will not recruit from. The list is based upon the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development development assistant committee's list of aid recipients and includes the vast majority of sub-Saharan countries.
	The World Health Assembly recognised the importance of this issue at its recent meeting in Geneva. There is an increasingly global aspect to the issue. The challenge for us is to manage international recruitment sensibly and in a way that affords health care staff the opportunity to improve their own skills. That is precisely what we want to see. That is why I was particularly pleased that the World Health Organisation expressed its support for the agreement that we reached with South Africa as a model for other countries to follow.
	The code of practice has been in place for nearly three years. This is a good time to review its operation. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced recently that we were looking at every aspect of the code to see how we could improve its effectiveness. I will keep the House informed of the progress of that review.

Laura Moffatt: Does my right hon. Friend accept that there have been even more benefits as a result of recruiting people to the NHS from other countries? It is right and proper to protect the health care systems of those nations, but the NHS has benefited from new experiences, new technologies and sharing those experiences. In my local group of hospitals, it has been a massively beneficial event, which we very much welcome.

John Hutton: There is no doubt at all that overseas staff have made an immense contribution to the national health service for many years. I have seen many hospitals throughout the country, as I am sure other hon. Members have, where nurses from the Philippines, India and other countries continue to make a huge contribution. It is right and proper that we pay tribute to the work that they are doing.

Andrew Turner: rose—

John Hutton: I have been generous in giving way and I am conscious that others want to speak. I want to make progress now.
	I was speaking about international recruitment. My question to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire is: what would he have done instead? What did his party do in office to deal with the same issues? The answer is nothing at all. Here again, his attack on our actions has all the hallmarks of expediency, not principle.
	The hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) says that we should direct NHS trusts to comply with the NHS code of practice. That was his view in a letter to The Times. How does that square with the policy of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire—that Ministers should stop telling NHS trusts what to do all the time?

Clive Efford: Does my right hon. Friend agree that targets are a means by which the Government can set out where they intend to take the national health service? If the Opposition are not prepared to set targets, is that not an indication that they do not intend to deliver anything for the NHS except what we have seen in the past?

John Hutton: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I shall deal in my concluding remarks, which I hope are not too far away, with the place and role of targets in any sensibly managed public health care system.
	I believe that there are some fundamental inconsistencies in what the Opposition have been saying which serve only to highlight once again just how threadbare their arguments are. We are enforcing the code sensibly and with the least possible bureaucracy. I think that that is the right way of proceeding.
	Of course, it is one thing to recruit staff—and we have an excellent record to be proud of—but another to retain them. If we are going to succeed, we need to offer attractive terms and conditions for all our staff. We intend to do that. That is what the new contracts for GPs and consultants and "Agenda for Change" are all designed to do. It is what our investment in extra child care and nursery places for NHS staff will help secure, and what new part-time, school-time and flexible working arrangements are designed to support.
	The new arrangements for primary care that have been agreed as part of the national negotiations are now being successfully implemented. These new arrangements recognise that delivering primary medical care to patients is not the sole responsibility of a general practitioner, but the responsibility of a group of clinicians working together to cater for what can be the somewhat complex and individual needs of patients. That is why this is a new practice-based contract covering all primary medical care contractors—GPs, nurses, other health professionals and practice managers.
	Let me remind the House of the benefits that the new contractual arrangements will bring to our constituents. This is a something-for-something deal in which primary care professionals are rewarded for the outcomes that they achieve, and not just for how many patients they treat, as has been the case in the past, and there are extra rewards for providing a quality service. The new contract provides an unprecedented level of investment in primary care to improve services to patients and revitalise general practice. As a direct result, UK expenditure on primary care will rise from just £6 billion in 2002–03 to £8 billion by next year—an increase of more than 33 per cent.
	Some 99.9 per cent. of existing GP contractors signed the new general medical services contracts offered to them by their local primary care trusts in April. All practices have been paid on time, too; again, that is in direct contrast with what happened when the Opposition introduced their changes to the old GP contract in 1990, when GP practices experienced serious delays in receiving accurate payments. Primary care trusts are currently in the process of agreeing new locally enhanced contracts with practices, to deliver additional new services for patients in their area. That is all underpinned by a new minimum guaranteed spending level.
	On the consultant contract, we have invested substantial extra resources—some £250 million more by 2005–06—to reward the NHS consultants who do most for the NHS and to secure real changes in the way in which patient care is delivered. The new contract is designed to provide over time a 15 per cent. increase in consultants' lifetime career earnings while improving basic starting salaries and ultimately having a corresponding impact on the value of their pensions. The new contract also provides a stronger, unambiguous framework of new obligations, with more consistent and equitable recognition for on-call duties and more effective job planning, based on a partnership approach, enabling consultants and employers to prioritise work better and to address excessive workloads.
	Following the outcome of the British Medical Association's ballot last year, NHS trusts have been reviewing the job plans of more than 20,000 consultants. That was always going to take time, but by the beginning of this month, four out of every five consultants who expressed an interest in the contract had received their final job plan offers. More than a third have now accepted work under the new contract. Progress to date has been slower than I would have preferred, but I expect the figures to improve significantly over the next few weeks.
	We are also making good progress on "Agenda for Change". As of 11 June, more than 70 per cent. of staff in "early implementer" sites have been matched to their new pay bands and, on average, just under half of all staff in those sites have moved on to the new pay system. In some trusts, that figure is as high as 98 per cent. National roll-out will begin on 1 December 2004 with the collective agreement of the NHS trade unions. It was originally envisaged that that would start in October. The delay was made primarily to allow some unions extra time for their second ballots to take place.
	We remain fully committed to implementation of "Agenda for Change". We are clear about one thing: all the union members who have already voted for "Agenda for Change" will receive the improved terms and conditions that will go with it from 1 October. That has never been an issue, and those members of staff will be unaffected by implementation, beginning in December.
	The Government are investing £1 billion in the first year of the implementation of the new pay system. Under "Agenda for Change", a newly qualified nurse will earn a minimum of £18,114, putting nurses' salaries on a par with teachers' starting salaries for the first time, and a porter will earn at least £10,762—both figures have increased by just less than 50 per cent. compared with 1997. None of that would have happened under a Conservative Government, and we know that the potential service and staff benefits fully justify the investment.
	For the first time, "Agenda for Change" will bring fair pay based on the important principle of equal pay for work of equal value, with appropriate rewards for those staff who take on additional duties and responsibilities. We are also working on measures to enable staff to work more flexibly. The NHS childcare strategy has provided central funding of more than £70 million to develop 140 new on-site nursery facilities, which will provide an extra 6,000 new nursery places for NHS staff.
	The Health Care Commission will inspect all NHS trusts against progress in those areas, which is something that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire would stop. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire wills the ends, but never the means, and in the process, he panders to the interests of producers rather than championing the interests of patients, which is exactly the same place occupied by the Liberal Democrats—no change there, either.
	The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said today that a Conservative Government would scrap all NHS targets. Maximum waiting times for NHS patients, which the Tories introduced, would be abolished under a new Conservative Government, who would also provide no guarantees on how long people wait in accident and emergency departments. A new Conservative Government would have no ambition to reduce death rates from cancer and coronary heart disease; they would not provide the right to see a GP within 48 hours; they would not specify minimum numbers of extra nurses and doctors; and they would not require new drugs to comply with National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines. What a total betrayal of the public interest! Conservative plans would provide not only no targets, but no accountability either. It would be the postcode lottery all over again, and the public will not wear it.
	We are not claiming today that every problem in the NHS has been solved—it has not—nor do we say that the NHS cannot improve still further, because we know that it can. Our argument today is that the NHS needs a clear strategy of investment and reform. Investment will allow NHS capacity to grow, and reform will allow us to deliver our services more efficiently, with greater responsiveness to the needs of patients, and greater and equal choices for patients over when, where, and how they are treated. Those choices are based on need, and not on ability to pay.
	The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire cannot deliver either of those objectives, because he fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the challenges facing the NHS and the changes that are needed in order to respond to them. I invite all my hon. Friends to follow our course, and to treat the Opposition motion with the contempt that it deserves in the Lobby tonight.

Paul Burstow: This is a useful debate in which to explore staff recruitment and retention. The NHS certainly achieves successes every minute of every day—it saves lives every day, and it changes lives every day. We should place on record our appreciation of the dedication and deep knowledge of the staff, doctors, nurses and other health care professionals and managers, and treat them as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, asset that the NHS possesses. It is therefore right that we are debating the recruitment and retention of staff and the challenges that confront the NHS.
	The debate is based on a motion tabled by the Conservative party. I have no particular problems with the motion, which is a statement of the blindingly obvious. It simply lists a series of concerns, many of which have been well rehearsed and are not subject to real debate. Understandably, the Government amendment sets out those aspects of the Government's record that they want to put in the shop window. However, it does not deal with the concerns about recruitment and retention, and I want to consider a few of those.
	One of the ways in which we can gauge the state of play in recruitment and retention is by considering the amount that the NHS spends every year on agency staff. According to the latest figures, the NHS spends £4 million every day on agency staff; that is £1.46 billion a year. Every year since the Government came to power, the cost of agency staff has increased. My criticism of spending on agency staff is, therefore, that it is out of control. That is not only my view, but that of the Audit Commission in its report "Brief Encounters", which was produced a couple of years ago. The Audit Commission found that not only was it rare for trusts to take a strategic overview of their use of temporary staff, but there was significant under-reporting of expenditure on agency staff in the NHS.
	Spending is poorly targeted and controlled and lacks strategic direction on questions such as the reason for the use of agency staff. Too often, they are recruited to fill gaps on a firefighting basis rather than as part of a sensible human resources strategy that is designed to provide greater flexibility for permanent staff as an aid to their retention and recruitment.

Sarah Teather: rose—

Sandra Gidley: rose—

Paul Burstow: I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) first.

Sarah Teather: Great minds think alike. Does my hon. Friend share my anxiety about the all-doctor three-month vacancy rate for the North West London strategic health authority, which is currently 4.6 per cent.—higher than the London average—and about the consequent cost implications for temporary staff cover?

Paul Burstow: My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I want to develop. There are questions to be asked about the age profile of the work force, which will mean a further increase in the number of people who retire and thus in vacancies that need filling. I want to deal with that point later.
	The Government's answer to the question about the way in which the NHS deals with the costs of agency nursing has been the introduction of NHS Professionals.

Sandra Gidley: My hon. Friend rightly raised the problem of agency staff, but I assume that he also knows that, although the Government trumpet the fact that they do not use staff from overseas in parts of the NHS, that does not apply to agency staff. High numbers are recruited from overseas and the purchasing agency appears to have no plans to deal with that. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on that?

Paul Burstow: It is interesting that NHS Professionals, which currently provides a service in approximately one in every four NHS hospitals, can currently cover only 65 per cent. of requests for agency staff. Private agencies provide 25 per cent. of agency staff. It would be useful if the Minister could confirm in her winding-up speech whether the ethical recruitment codes apply to private agencies through NHS Direct. Clearly, that is a cause for concern.
	It is surprising that, even with only one in four hospitals buying in to NHS Professionals, the body can meet only 65 per cent. of the demand for agency staff. The specialist press, especially for nursing staff, is regularly filled with concerns and complaints about the time it takes for people to get their payments. I understand that a report was commissioned to consider the establishing of NHS Professionals and the lessons to be learned from that. Will the Minister tell us today whether the report will see the light of day? Written parliamentary questions show that the Government have not been willing to publish their conclusions and findings from the experience of NHS Professionals.
	Another measure of staffing pressures in the NHS is the increase in the use of overseas staff, which has already been mentioned. The number of overseas staff has increased from 2,281 in 1996 to 44,442 last year. Nurses constitute the lion's share of the overseas recruits. Currently, 8 per cent. of nurses in England, 28 per cent. of nurses in London and more than half the new entrants to the Nursing and Midwifery Council register are from overseas.
	As Ministers know, I have raised concerns about overseas recruitment in Adjournment debates and through written questions for many years. I have expressed anxieties about both the ethics of overseas recruitment and the way in which some of those who come here to work in good faith, especially in the independent sector, are mercilessly exploited by their employers. Those concerns remain, and the Government's code of practice on overseas recruitment, although welcome, offers very little practical protection, particularly for staff outwith the NHS.
	My concern is not just this country's reliance on the recruitment of overseas staff for the NHS; it is also the increasing number of home-grown staff who are opting to work overseas. The fact is that the health care work force is becoming increasingly globalised, and competition among industrialised countries for scarce resources is intensifying. We have already seen more than 8,000 nurses leave the UK to work abroad in a single year, and the number opting to work in the United States has more than doubled. Indeed, it has been estimated that the US has a shortfall of more than 1 million nursing staff, and it is coming to the UK and other industrialised countries to recruit nurses to take back to the United States.
	My plea to the Government is that they should not rest on their laurels in regard to international recruitment. This matter requires concerted international action, partly of the kind that the Minister described earlier. Surely the Government should take the opportunity provided by their chairmanship of the G8 to propose an international code of good practice for health recruitment, so that we can not only set a good example but ensure that others follow it, especially those industrialised nations with the spending power to recruit not only from each other but from those countries that can least afford to let staff go.

Andrew Turner: I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's argument, in which he seems to equate the United Kingdom with a third-world country.

Paul Burstow: That is pathetic.

Andrew Turner: Well, I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. What is wrong with nursing staff from this country choosing to work in the United States?

Paul Burstow: I fear that the hon. Gentleman was not really following my argument, which was that we are in a globalised, competitive environment, and we have to take due heed of that when we negotiate with our partners. We need to have arrangements in place to ensure that we are not withdrawing from recruiting overseas while others are still doing it. There needs to be internationalisation of the arrangements, rather than the UK simply doing this on its own. I certainly do not have a problem with people choosing to work elsewhere; that was not my point. However, if we do not address this issue beyond the domestic level, we shall have serious problems.

Lindsay Hoyle: Does the hon. Gentleman have comparative salary figures for nurses and doctors in the United States, the UK and Europe?

Paul Burstow: No, I do not have those figures immediately to hand, but if the hon. Gentleman would like them, I shall try to find out what they are. However, I am sure that a written question would be able to elicit the information from the Department of Health.
	This increasing reliance on agency and overseas staff is likely to increase because of the demographics of much of the UK's health work force. Whether we are talking about nurses, doctors or other key health professional, there is—dare I say it—a demographic time bomb ticking away under the NHS. The fuse for that time bomb was set during the Conservatives' time in government, because they failed to provide the necessary training places and investment in staffing. However, the time bomb is still ticking away today. For example, one in five nurses is over the age of 50—indeed, the Royal College of Nursing goes so far as to say that it is one in four—and a huge number of nurses are due to be lost through retirement over the next few years. The same applies to general practitioners. According to the Department of Health, at the last count there were 3,435 GP vacancies—an increase of 31 per cent. over the year before.
	More telling than that is the fact that the number of applicants applying for each post has fallen in each of the last three years. In 2001, there were 6.9 applicants per vacancy, but that figure had more than halved to 3.3 by 2003. Things appear to be getting worse rather than better in terms of recruiting extra GPs, not least because of lifestyle choices resulting in more of them choosing to work part-time rather than full-time, although the Government record these figures only by head count, rather than by full-time equivalence.

John Hutton: The hon. Gentleman must know that he is wrong about that. We publish figures on both head counts and whole-time equivalence, and I am sure that he will want to correct that statement. My question to him on international recruitment is perhaps historical, but I think that it is important. When we had the election in 2001, his party was promising to recruit something like 4,000 more doctors a year than we were planning to. He has just lectured the House, in very polite terms, about the dangers of international recruitment, but can he tell us where those extra doctors would have come from, if not from international recruitment?

Paul Burstow: I think that the Minister has misconstrued what I was saying about international recruitment, perhaps to make a political point. The point is surely that, when it comes to recruiting from overseas, there needs to be an ethical framework that is not only pursued by this country in making individual agreements with individual countries. It must be an arrangement that involves other countries as well. That is the context. I do not have a problem with a globalised market in terms of health care. But given that in the last year for which there are figures, 44,000 staff have come from overseas, that demonstrates the extent to which the NHS is reliant on those staff to provide health care in this country.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Paul Burstow: I am spoilt for choice. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath).

David Heath: My hon. Friend is being generous with his time. May I return to the point about general practitioners? I am a little alarmed to be told by long-established practices in my constituency that for the first time for many years, they are not having the opportunity to train new GPs in their practices this year, not because of any deficiencies in the training that they are providing, but because of funding at a higher level. Does he share my concern that at a time when we need new, young GPs, apparently, practices in Somerset that are willing to provide that sort of training in a perfect setting are not allowed to do so?

Paul Burstow: Certainly, I share my hon. Friend's concern, and I am sure that the Minister will address it.
	I want to address the issue of the demographics of the GP work force, because it causes concern to many Members on both sides of the House, and particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather). The number of GPs who will meet the mandatory retirement age of 70 in the next few years is set to rise rapidly, particularly in London and the west midlands. Looking forward, two thirds of the 4,000 GPs who qualified in south Asian medical schools are due to retire by 2007. A lot of today's work force difficulties, however, must be seen as a legacy of the last Conservative Government. Poor work force planning, a reduction in training places, and cuts in staff left the NHS with chronic staff shortages. In 1983, the Conservatives recruited 37,000 nurses, but by 1995, that had dropped to 6,000. By the time that the Conservatives had left office, the figures that I have seen suggest that at least 51,000 fewer nurses were working in the NHS.
	The legacy of staff shortages, however, was made worse by this Government's decision to stick to the Conservative spending plans for the first two years after coming into office in 1997. It was not until the NHS plan that a concerted effort was begun to tackle work force issues. Clearly, there is a long way to go to tackle the shortages that have been outlined so far in today's debate.
	That brings me on to the issue of contracts, in relation to GPs, consultants and "Agenda for Change". Clearly, there is concern about slippage in the implementation of "Agenda for Change" among the work force, but the Minister's comments today are undoubtedly welcome. The implementation of the consultants contract, however, has stretched the capacity of personnel staff in the NHS to the limit. As has been mentioned, the British Medical Association survey earlier this month found that eight months after doctors had voted yes to the new contract, around a quarter of NHS hospital trusts had still not implemented the contract in full. The Minister has told us today that only a third of consultants currently work to the new contract. He has at least indicated some regret that progress has not been as rapid as it should have been. Clearly, it needs to be more rapid if we are to see the improvements that we all want in that respect. But we also need to raise concerns about capacity. One of the consequences of the new consultants contract is often that consultants work fewer sessions, which means less capacity in the NHS.
	Taken together those contracts are welcome developments, and over time they should deliver significant improvement to the working lives of the staff and to the quality of care for patients. However, implementing all those changes during the same year, against a background of continuing staff shortages, runs the risk of reducing NHS capacity. When all those changes are combined with the impact of the working time directive, some serious risks are posed to the NHS in terms of its ability to deliver the Government's wider agenda on issues such as choice.
	The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who will respond to this debate, has responsibility for dentistry. I want to pose one quick question to her. When does she expect the work force review in relation to dentistry, which has been long awaited, to be published? It was commissioned back in July 2001, and given to the Government in the autumn last year. We are told that it will be coming shortly. How long is shortly? It would be useful to clarify that, not least because when the Commission for Health Improvement examined dentistry, it found that 26 per cent. of people have not seen an NHS dentist for more than two years, and 8 per cent. have never seen one. Half the population are not registered with a dentist. Staggeringly, there was a 70 per cent. increase in the number of people having to contact NHS Direct on dentistry matters between November 2001 and February 2002. When will that survey be published?
	Public health is a very live issue today, and we expect a White Paper in the autumn. In March this year, the Faculty of Public Health Medicine published a report on the specialist public health work force, which made sorry reading. It warned:
	"There is strong evidence to suggest that the current numbers of consultants and specialists in public health, health protection and academic public health in the UK are insufficient for the work that is required."
	It went on to point out that deficiencies in staff numbers had been known since the national survey of communicable disease function undertaken by the NHS executive in 1997, but that
	"important deficiencies have not generally been rectified despite the addition of significant new responsibilities to these consultants."
	Just when will the Government come forward with a work force plan to ensure that that part of the work force is increased? Do they agree with the faculty's figure of a need for a 40 per cent. increase in the consultant work force in that field?
	Just recruiting more staff to meet ever-increasing demands on the NHS is not a sustainable policy. As Derek Wanless found in his first report on health funding, if the NHS continues much as it is at present, it will cost an extra £30 billion a year to provide health care by 2020. There is a need to tackle the causes of ill health, both through preventing and postponing the onset of disease and through better controlling the spread of infection.
	I shall not rehearse the need to tackle health-care acquired infections, an issue that we debated yesterday in some detail under the Health Protection Agency Bill.

Jonathan R Shaw: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House what his policies are? He is just giving us a commentary on the issues that the NHS faces. What are his solutions to the problems that he has set out?

Paul Burstow: I am speaking to the terms of the motion. The hon. Gentleman should read the motion, tabled in the name of the Leader of the official Opposition, which is simply a list of the problems. I am not going to give the hon. Gentleman what he wants today, but I am more than happy to debate Liberal Democrat health policies in Government time.
	On infections, the National Audit Office has said that 100,000 people every year pick up infections while in hospital. Research by the Public Health Laboratory Service has found that patients with health-care acquired infections stay in hospital on average 2.9 times longer—about 14 days extra—than those who do not pick up infections. That implies that about 1.4 million bed days are lost every year as a direct consequence of infections picked up in the NHS, which is the equivalent of seven and a half average-sized district hospitals. The potential capacity gain for the NHS from tackling issues of infection, and really bearing down on that problem, would be huge.
	Work force issues are and will remain a critical factor in the NHS's ability to deliver. There are many issues still to be tackled in developing a work force strategy in this country, but what is clear, if not perhaps to every Member present today, is that we as a House must continue to applaud, reward, recognise and value the staff of the national health service as its greatest asset. Today's debate is not about Liberal Democrat policy but about the Government's record. That record is not as good as the Minister and the Government would like us to believe, and we have outlined why that is. When the elections come, we will demonstrate why this Government's record does not justify their being returned to office.

David Hinchliffe: The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) has had to leave the Chamber for a moment, for which he has apologised. I want to wish him well, in his absence, in his new role. He has a good command of health policy, and I am sure that our debates will be assisted by his contributions. Having said that, I think that his contribution today was somewhat thin, to put it mildly—about as thin as the Tory Benches have been during a Tory debate. There are just two Tory Back Benchers in their places at the moment, which raises serious questions about the Conservatives' commitment to health policy. They cannot drum up more support than that, yet it is their own Opposition debate.
	I have always believed that effective opposition, whether at the national or local level, will bring about better government. However, this Parliament has lacked an effective Opposition. What worries me particularly about the Opposition's focus is that their attention on policy issues has tended to skew us away from what I believe are the real issues on health policy. A good example was the first Opposition debate this year, which was on care of the elderly. The Conservatives skewed the entire debate by concentrating on the number of people in care homes, failing to debate prevention, how to assist people or measures to help people to retain their independence in the community. It was basically the Tory party being led a dance by nursing home and care home owners—and the Conservatives danced well to their tune.
	Today's debate, following the Tory motion, portrays health as an essentially curative process. We are talking about the response to illness and about cures. We are bogged down with the institution of the hospital, just as we were bogged down in the earlier debate with the institution of the care home. I really think that we need to question the focus of the Opposition's concerns about health care.
	We are not talking today about the fundamentally important health issues, although they were touched on by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow)—by that I mean the preventive agenda, which is about helping people to avoid being in hospital in the first place. The NHS Confederation said this week that one in 10 people who are in hospital do not need to be in hospital—and I believe that that is a gross underestimate. A consultant I spoke to recently told me that one in three people did not need to be in hospital, so let us examine why that is the case. It is sad that our debate has not touched on that crucial issue. The Opposition's frame of debate distracts us from addressing the crucial issues of health policy at the present time.
	Turning specifically to the motion, the Opposition are, frankly, daft in trying to censure the Government over staff shortages. For anyone seriously looking into health policy, that really does not wear. The present Government have probably done more than any other in the history of the NHS to try to deal with staff shortages and they should be commended rather than criticised for their efforts during their seven years in power. The Government deserve praise for their initiatives on recruitment, which have been set out by the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton). The efforts of the Government have also brought about investment in training and they are attempting to establish a family-friendly NHS environment. My right hon. Friend spoke about 6,000 nursery places. That is important for getting people, particularly nursing staff, back into the health service when they have left to have children.

David Taylor: My hon. Friend is focusing on family-friendly policies and the attitudes of hospitals as employers towards human resource issues. Does he agree that, as these policies start to bed in and become more widely known, many returning nurses will return direct to the NHS work force rather than, as some do now, choosing to work for agencies on account of their more flexible employment policies? That will be good for continuity and good for economics.

David Hinchliffe: Yes, I believe that that is the case. It will be a long, slow process, but we are heading in the right direction.
	We should do more to care for our NHS staff and seek to improve the environment in which they work. About six months ago, I spent one night—a Saturday night and Sunday morning—with my daughter in a casualty unit in my constituency, and I saw the pressures placed on nursing and medical staff. It really opened my eyes to the pressures that they are under and I think that we need to address those pressures. I saw how members of the public who ought to know better could abuse our health service staff.
	The motion talks about the role of staff in high-quality health care. The Government are guilty of failing to emphasise the progress that has been made on quality of care. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire talked about numbers of finished consultant episodes, the normal measurement that is used, and he said that the number of FCEs did not reflect the amount of investment that had been made.
	However, the Opposition very rarely mention one factor—the improvements that have been made in the quality of care offered by the NHS. The Government deserve great credit for the measures that they have taken to address in detail some of the problems that used to exist. For instance, the introduction of clinical governance has made a big difference to the operation of the NHS. The Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, which replaced the Commission for Health Improvement, has done a lot of work on quality at local level, and that has made a big difference nationwide. Again, professional validation seems like common sense, but the Government deserve credit for ensuring that people's skills are checked and updated.
	The Opposition's motion talks about bureaucracy and red tape. One assumes that that very easy criticism is aimed at organisations such as the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, or at the measures and mechanisms introduced to cover the important question of quality.
	I disagree fundamentally with the Tory motion, but I have a few personal anxieties that I want to express about the direction of certain Government health policies. I begin with the question of central directives to the NHS. I said earlier that the debate had a curative approach and, all too often, central directives reflect a curative, hospital-based approach to health. That needs to be examined when the direction and targets set for the NHS by the Government are reviewed.
	Occasionally, the central directives can also be seen to constitute a market-style approach to health. I am genuinely concerned about the consensus in respect of choice that has developed among the three main parties in this Chamber. Where will that concept take us? We are all for choice—of course we are—but we need to discuss in detail what the word really means.
	Who is pushing for choice in the NHS? I get hundreds of letters about the service from all over the country, but I do not recall one that asked about choice. People write to ask about all sorts of things, and to tell me that they want their local service to give them what they need, near where they live. However, they do not go on about choice. Where does the concept of choice come from? I should be interested to get to the bottom of that.
	Also, are we prepared for the consequences of choice? We know about the impact of choice on education, and about what is commonly called middle-class flight from schools. People with inner-city schools in their constituency will know that choice has meant that middle-class people move out and shift their children to schools in the leafy suburbs. Are we prepared for the same thing happening in the NHS? There is no doubt that it will happen, and the consequence that it will have for the NHS needs to be thought through.
	What is the consequence for the wider health care agenda of concentrating on choice? I must tell my hon. Friends on the Front Bench that, if we are not careful, we are in danger of making again the mistake that the Tories made—that is, we will create a public perception of health that is all hospitals, treatments and cures but which has nothing to say about prevention.

Patsy Calton: Is not real choice a matter of getting timely diagnosis and treatment for people near where they live, and not about chasing all over the country after the best surgeon? Not everyone can go to the best surgeon, although some would like to be able to buy their way into doing so. We need good, local treatment that is available when needed.

David Hinchliffe: I agree with the hon. Lady. I think that the Government probably agree with the point that she has made. On the choice issue, when we discuss Tory policy we often get down to the idea that somehow a person choosing to go private assists the NHS. The Tories do not seem to understand that the doctors treating people in the private sector are the same ones treating people in the NHS. They are not some magic, additional number of consultants. People say, "We are helping the health service by going private." What a load of tripe. What a load of nonsense. Of course they are not. They are damaging the health service by giving consultants the continuing incentive to treat people privately. We have to get those consultants back working in the health service. It is the big issue that has not been addressed by successive Governments since 1948. This Government have tried, and I wish them success in it. It is the key to solving so many of the problems.

David Taylor: Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Hinchliffe: I will not give way because I know that colleagues want to contribute.
	One of the things that I have learned from looking at some of the central directives is that they can be crude and simplistic and can have unintended consequences. I shall give just one example in the time that I have—waiting list targets. We come back to the activities of certain consultants. I know for a fact that some consultants wait until their waiting list levels reach a stage at which the trust will be penalised and then say to the trust managers, "Look, with certain patients you are going to be penalised. You might have your star rating affected." The patients on the waiting list end up being put into the consultant's session on a Saturday morning at a hugely increased cost to the NHS. That has happened in many parts of the country, and the Government should look into the way in which targets are skewing our approach and being exploited.
	The concordat with the private sector was a fundamental error. We know that each item costs 43 per cent. more than we would have paid within the NHS. Okay, some people have gained from that. They have obtained earlier access to treatment. Some of my constituents have done so, but we have not addressed the reason why they had to wait all that time. The reason is frequently because the consultants were not on the golf course but doing private work instead of meeting clinical priorities within the NHS.

Lindsay Hoyle: Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Hinchliffe: I will not give way. I apologise to my hon. Friend.
	The Tory motion exposes a worrying narrow view of health care, which the Government should not follow. It is a curative approach. It does not address the real issues in health.
	I have spent the past year on the Health Committee investigating sexual health—some of those problems really do need to be addressed—and obesity. The message that one gets big style when one looks into public health issues is that the Tories made a fundamental error way back in the 1970s by castrating public health. In 1974 they got rid of the medical officers of health. Between 1979 and 1997 they cast aside public health. That is the real agenda.
	In his conclusion, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire talked about setting the NHS free. We have set it free from the legacy of 1979. The consequences are still having to be addressed by this Government, who have been in power for seven years. God forbid that we ever get the Conservatives back in power, setting free the NHS and letting the market rip, as happened in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Andrew Turner: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wakefield—yes, Wakefield.

David Hinchliffe: Somewhere in Yorkshire.

Andrew Turner: Yes, somewhere in Yorkshire. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe). I do not intend to go far down the road that he explored, but I was interested in his suggestion that family-friendly policies were a priority in the NHS when it is only since the introduction of the new GP contract that none of my GP practices is open on a Saturday morning.
	I wish to pursue a number of issues briefly, and the first is the question of shortages. My hon. Friends have spoken of the shortages of doctors, consultants and nurses and the need to recruit from overseas to provide an adequate supply. I refer the Minister, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), to the shortage of dentists in my constituency. She is familiar with that situation, having kindly visited the Denbigh House practice in my constituency on 3 March this year. I remember that she said at the time that a review would take place of the provision of dentists, because the number of NHS dentists on the island had declined significantly. I congratulate her on being the first Minister to say that access to NHS dental provision should be available on the island and that my constituents should not have to travel to the mainland for that purpose.

Sandra Gidley: The hon. Gentleman mentions travelling to the mainland to find an NHS dentist, but they are similarly rare in Hampshire. When found, they often provide care for children only on condition that the parents register privately with them.

Andrew Turner: I am indeed aware of that, because I read in the Southern Daily Echo recently that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) was concerned about the shortage of dentists. I also know that constituents have been referred to a dentist in Southsea by NHS Direct and have travelled there to be told that their children will only be treated if the parents sign up for private dental treatment. The issue of dental provision is a serious weakness in the Government's strategy.
	The chief executive of the local primary care trust wrote to me on 14 June to say that he had expected the recommendations of the Government's review
	"to be available to the PCT by mid-May so that we could begin to make progress."
	[Interruption.] I know that the Minister finds her colleague more interesting than me, but the chief executive also says that
	"we have been advised by the Department of Health that the report is taking longer than was originally anticipated . . . We have not, as yet, been informed of the date this will be to hand."
	I accept that the Minister has good intentions, but the number of NHS dentists in my constituents and in Hampshire has rapidly declined, and my constituents are suffering. I hope that in her reply she will bring up to date the remarks that she so kindly made on 3 March.

Clive Efford: The hon. Gentleman seems to want a target for the number of NHS dentists. Would he care to comment on the remarks earlier by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley)? Does he expect that at the next election the Conservative party will publish a target by which their success in improving access to NHS dentistry would be measured?

Andrew Turner: The answer is simple. The Minister is charged with delivering a promise that the Prime Minister made in 2001 that within two years everyone should have access to an NHS dentist. It was the Prime Minister's target, but the Government have failed to deliver. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) explained our position on targets amply and adequately, and I do not intend to go further down that road.

Clive Efford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Turner: I am sorry, but I do not have time to give way again.
	The second point to which I would like the Minister to respond is that raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) in European Standing Committee C on 24 March. My hon. Friend referred to the effect of the European working time directive on the number of consultants required in small hospitals—
	It being Seven o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Exempted business),
	That, at this day's sitting, the motion in the name of Mr. Michael Howard relating to NHS staff recruitment and retention may be proceeded with, though opposed, until 8.00 p.m.—[Mr. Coaker.]
	Question agreed to.

NHS RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Question again proposed, That the original words stand part of the Question.

Andrew Turner: In that Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury kindly referred to my hospital, St. Mary's. Referring to me, he said, correctly:
	"He is particularly worried about this issue because of St. Mary's hospital on the Isle of Wight. It is a very small hospital for very good reasons: the inaccessibility of the Isle of Wight, the difficulty of getting people to the mainland and the fact that the population doubles in the summer months."—[Official Report, European Standing Committee C, 24 March 2004; c. 28.]
	What, he asked, would happen to such a hospital if the European working time directive were introduced? The Minister of State is familiar with the hospital because she visited it on 3 March. Unfortunately, however, answer came there none from Ministers in the European Standing Committee; they were unable to explain how a small hospital could employ sufficient consultants to comply with the requirements of the European working time directive. As her hon. Friends left the question unanswered, will the Minister answer it today? [Interruption.] The Government imposed the target. Labour Members seem to be worried—

Clive Efford: Targets are measures by which the public can assess the success of the Government. The Government may not meet some of their targets but at least they have some idea of the direction in which they are taking the NHS. The hon. Gentleman's party have no such plans and will set no targets, nor has it given any indication of where it intends to go with the NHS if it is successful at the next election.

Andrew Turner: My hon. Friends on the Front Bench will not set targets for hospitals; they will set targets for themselves. The customers of the NHS, like those in the private sector, are perfectly capable of determining whether they are getting the quality of service they want without reference to a range of unnecessary bureaucratic Government targets.
	I fear I have run out of time but I want to underline the two points that I would like the Minister to answer: the effect of the European working time directive on St. Mary's and how soon her review of the shortage of dentists on the Isle of Wight will be available, so that that shortage can be corrected.

Ann Keen: It is often said that people remember nurses. Nurses remember Governments, and this nurse certainly remembers the Opposition when they were in government.
	A few days after the Conservatives were re-elected in 1992, I went to support my local football team—Brentford—and outside the ground were nurses in uniform with collection buckets. They were collecting for accident and emergency equipment for the local hospital. Down the road at Kempton Park, the West Middlesex university hospital stakes were also raising money for vital equipment for my local hospital. A demoralised work force were being asked to beg—literally—on the streets to collect money for equipment.
	We are talking about recruitment and retention. That was a demoralised work force. If staff are not cared for, they cannot care for the community of patients that they are unquestionably able and trained to look after. Other services in the hospital were demoralised; they are often called hotel services, but they actually involve people who do vital work. Vital cleaning services were contracted out to the lowest bidder. Dedicated staff had their terms and conditions of employment reduced to poverty, with no employment rights. They worked a full week, yet they were entitled to claim benefits. Of course, there was no minimum wage; the Conservatives opposed that. Unemployment was high, and people were very nervous about leaving to look for other employment. Their skills were not valued, unlike today, when all the training and development needs of all NHS staff are being met.
	The motion talks about retention. To retain staff, people must be proud of where they work. Under the Conservative Government, many NHS buildings were in very poor condition. Many were not even just of the last century, but the previous century: workhouse facilities. I worked in them. I know what it was like to be on night duty, wandering around looking for somewhere that could offer some refreshment—tea, coffee or food—at night. Our needs were not met; they were not catered for in any way. That applied right across the board, not just in my own profession, nursing. If people asked for training and development, they were told that there was no money.
	Some of the pay review body awards were not always paid in full. When I was employed by Ealing health authority, I was asked whether I was prepared to give back my pay rise because, if I did not, the hospital would have to make cuts. That was in 1992. I tell hon. Members now that I had a very different conversation today, when I spoke to the chief executive of my primary care trust, John James, who leads Hounslow's PCT, along with Christine Hay. We could contrast the training and development and, yes, we could discuss the improvement in GP recruitment that, without question, has taken place in Hounslow. Many of the GPs who have been recruited are salaried, which makes quite a difference, especially to medical staff who want to return to work after perhaps taking time off to have children or for child care.
	Flexibility is so important. The rigidity of the employment of NHS workers in the past put many people off staying in the NHS. The NHS is one of the most brilliant, wonderful sectors in which people can work. The staff are most dedicated. No one joins the NHS, right across the spectrum, because they want to earn vast sums of money. Very special people decide to work in the health service, and they have always deserved better. I am proud of the way that the Government are looking after NHS staff. Without question, the money for training and development is there. Without question, child care makes a difference.
	I have talked to Meena Singh, who is the director of West Middlesex university hospital—now a modern building, opened by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last November. I was employed at that hospital in 1985. I was told at my interview that I would be working in a brand-new hospital by 1987. It took a Labour Government and a Labour Member of Parliament, a Labour nurse, to help to deliver that hospital in 2003. Much hard work took place, but there is, of course, more to do.
	Without question, there are recruitment problems with radiographers, as has been acknowledged. We need to consider the mix of skills in the health service professions. My own profession, nursing, has come to the forefront, and many of the duties that nurses now perform will soon be recognised in pay. With "Agenda for Change", nurses can go up a clinical pay structure—a clinical ladder—but the previous Administration of the Conservative party prevented them from doing so by creating managers out of nurses. If nurses wanted to make progress in their careers, they had to go into management.
	There is nothing wrong with management. There is nothing wrong with managing the NHS properly. There is nothing wrong with having support staff who are trained in the latest IT skills. I started my working life in the NHS as a hospital clerk. We still need to improve the administration services in many hospitals, as they have not changed much since I worked as a clerical assistant.
	Without question, recruitment and retention require the most important aspect of NHS delivery. Without question, we have now increased the availability of treatment for patients, but we have done so with the development of a dedicated staff and with the development of a dedicated Government who are totally committed to the NHS, and without question, everyone who works in the NHS will always remember that.

David Amess: I join all hon. Members in saying a very big thank you to all the women and men who work in our national health service. Without the staff of the NHS there would not be a national health service. I am sure that I speak for every one of them when I say that they are overworked and underpaid. If any Government can come up with the solution to that particular problem, then I am waiting to hear it.
	The last Conservative Government were elected in the last century. I want to talk about this century, in particular about recruitment and retention. I am not suggesting for a moment that I and my parliamentary colleagues had the solutions to all the problems that the NHS faces, but I am sick to death of Labour jargon. What particularly grates with me is the talk of targets and star ratings. The people who work in the NHS are fed up with those two things as well.
	I congratulate the chairman of the British Medical Association Council who, when speaking about the burden of targets, said:
	"The one memory that will live long after the sweet taste of negotiating successes and the sour taste of acid encounters with self-serving secretaries of state"—
	I wonder whom he might have been talking about—
	"have left my palate is the creeping, morale-sapping erosion of doctors' clinical autonomy brought about by micro-management from Whitehall which has turned the NHS I hold so dear into the most centralised public service in the free world."
	He mentioned
	"The stifling of innovation by excessive, intrusive audit and the imposition of Department of Health diktats . . . The shackling of doctors by prescribing guidelines, referral guidelines and protocols . . . The suffocation of professional responsibility by target-setting and production-line values that leave little room for the professional judgement of individual doctors or the needs of individual patients",
	and went on to say:
	"Targets are set nationally without any appreciation of what they might mean for individual doctors sitting in consulting rooms with individual patients."
	On star ratings, the chairman of the British Medical Association said:
	"Nobody should use star ratings to judge how well a hospital is doing. They measure little more than hospitals' ability to meet political targets and take inadequate account of clinical care or factors such as social deprivation. It is grossly unfair on staff working in low-rated trusts that public confidence in them is being undermined."
	I certainly support everything that those two gentlemen said.
	I want to touch on recruitment and retention as they relate to general practitioners, dentistry, the people who work in our mental health services, the people dealing with obesity and those who deal with allergies. The BMA has rightly questioned the Government's claims that GP recruitment targets have been met. The chairman of the BMA's general practitioners committee said:
	"The Department quotes headcount figures but many of the new GPs will be working part-time in general practice. Using the Government's own figures, we calculate that between September 1999 and September 2003 there was at best an increase of 1,323 full-time equivalent GPs in England over the four year period."
	If hon. Members are honest with themselves, they will all admit that they know from their constituency pressures that not enough GPs are being trained. Again, I look forward to hearing the Government's ideas on how that can be improved.

Clive Efford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Amess: No. The hon. Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham) would be angry if I did, because Mr. Deputy Speaker is, I think, hoping to allow one more Back-Bench Member to speak before we run out of time.
	On dentistry, there are large queues when a general dental practitioner accepts new NHS patients, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) said. The UK has one of the worst dentist-to-population ratios in Europe. The average ratio in Europe is one dentist for every 1,1540 citizens, but in the UK it is one for every 2,097. There are two reasons for that. First, there is inadequate recruitment of young people to university degrees in dentistry, and, secondly, there is insufficient capacity in our dental schools, about which the Government have said very little. The intake of undergraduates to English dental schools increased by only 1.8 per cent. on the previous academic year, but the capacity of dental schools is not increasing fast enough to meet the increased demand for new dental students, which the Government claim they are meeting. When I asked the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to encourage more applicants, I was told that the Government have published a new brochure—my goodness, they are marvellous at publishing glossy brochures—and it will be distributed in places where young people will hopefully pick it up and read it. Interestingly, the Government claim that dentistry is a popular choice for A-level students, with nearly two applications for every available place in dental schools. I hope that we will learn more about that when the Minister responds.
	Retention is another problem. Overall spending on dental care in the NHS budget is far too low to meet demand, causing an increasing number of dentists, as we have heard, to turn to private work. Although the Government like to claim that expenditure on dental services has increased since 1997, that is misleading. As a percentage of the total gross NHS expenditure, the funding of dental services has decreased every year since 1997. Dentists are fed up with the treadmill system of the NHS and are spending more time in private practice. I am delighted that two dental practitioners in Southend, West who came to my surgery are going to set up an entirely NHS-based dental practice. They hope to work closely with the primary care trust, and the success of the enterprise will depend on the skills of Irish dentists.
	The Select Committee on Health is conducting a short inquiry into allergies. Ministers will shortly appear before it to answer questions, but its members have been shocked by evidence that the problem of allergies has been completely ignored. The number of allergies is escalating, and we heard expert evidence that that is because we are much cleaner, so our immune system has to look for other things to do. The Royal College of Physicians has published an earth-shattering report entitled "Allergy—the unmet need", but unfortunately until the Select Committee inquiry, the problem received no attention whatever. One third of the population suffers from an allergy, yet only six centres provide full-time specialist allergy services in the UK. To get a better idea of the scarcity of allergy specialists trained to deal with that enormous need, one need only glance at the numbers. There is only one whole-time equivalent allergist-led clinic for every 3.4 million of the population and one allergist for every 2 million people. The Health Committee looks forward to hearing Ministers' response to that problem. There are worrying reports that many GPs are not trained to deal with the problem and simply do not want to address it. Research by Allergy UK, a leading charity on the issue, reveals that many allergy sufferers believe that their problems are not being addressed and that GPs do not have the necessary expertise to deal with them. One patient describing her GP's reaction to her concerns about allergies said:
	"He told me very politely to go away and stop bothering him."
	I hope the Government will take the comments on allergies very seriously.
	Mental health is without doubt the Cinderella service. There is a huge shortage of psychiatrists and physicians to deal with mental health. A study carried out in December by the Commission for Health Improvement found that there were
	"serious problems nationally with the recruitment and retention of mental health staff."
	The data show that three-month vacancy rates of 11.3 per cent. within the psychiatry group were higher than in any other specialty. I am delighted to say that a charitable organisation in Southend, West called Growing Together is trying to address the problem.

Martin Smyth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Amess: I am tempted, but there is one other hon. Member who wishes to speak before the winding-up speeches.
	Finally, the Health Committee has led the way in the national and international debate on obesity. All Members of the Committee were shocked and disappointed by the fact that such a serious issue seems to have been ignored until now. It is certainly not just a matter of physical exercise; it has much to do with the content of what we eat.
	The problems of recruitment and retention in the areas of health care about which I have spoken reflect the marginalising and neglect of issues that should be critical health priorities for the NHS. These are long-term problems and the country deserves to have them dealt with seriously. It is time for discussion to end and for more action from the Government.

Tony Cunningham: I thank hon. Members for enabling me to speak. In the few minutes that remain, I shall concentrate on local issues of recruitment and retention. There are problems, but it is important to put them into perspective. In west Cumbria, no in-patients are waiting more than nine months, and no out-patients are waiting more than 17 weeks. There are 167 out-patients waiting more than 13 weeks, compared with the figure 12 months ago, when it was about 600. That represents a fall of about 70 per cent.
	The accident and emergency unit in west Cumbria has a proud record: 96.7 per cent. of those in accident and emergency are seen and treated within four hours. That is an incredible achievement and I pay tribute to the staff, who almost perform miracles in the accident and emergency department. With regard to cancer services, 99.9 per cent. of referrals are seen by a specialist within two weeks.
	We have 229 more doctors and 1,690 more nurses. One or two hon. Members have mentioned Filipina nurses. In 2002 we recruited 31 Filipina nurses. They have integrated extremely well and do a fantastic job. There have been three weddings and two babies have been born as a result of them coming to the area. The lady who was responsible for the Filipino programme says:
	"It has been a wonderful experience for all concerned. The nurses have settled well into our hospitals and communities and have embraced life in Cumbria. It has proved to be an exceptionally successful international recruitment campaign for the Trust."
	That is a great record.
	One of the problems that we have with recruitment and retention is the isolation of west Cumbria—we are quite a distance from the nearest motorway, and so on. However, we have a fantastic quality of life: relatively low house prices, compared with London; the lowest crime rate in the country; and some of the finest schools. If there are any doctors or nurses out there watching the debate, west Cumbria is a superb place to come and work.
	However, quality of life is not enough. There are two things that we must do. First, we must try to get a medical school in west Cumbria. Four new medical schools have been created recently and there have been three collaborations between universities. If more people were trained at a medical school in the area, there would be a greater chance of them putting down roots and staying there.
	Another thing that would help with both recruitment and retention is a brand new hospital. A brand new community hospital is currently being built. It is a multi-million pound development that will be a huge bonus for the people of Workington, but we need a new district hospital in west Cumbria. I think that the figures suggest that by 2010, about 100 new hospitals will be built in this country. I hope that once all the machinations have been gone through and the consultations have taken place, west Cumbria will get a brand new hospital.
	We have talked about targets and all sorts of things,but the vast majority of NHS users whom I speak to—I am sure that other hon. Members would say the same thing anecdotally—tell me what fantastic treatment and service they had. Regardless of the problems with recruitment and retention, there is no doubt that we have seen a huge improvement in the NHS throughout the seven years for which we have had a Labour Government.

John Baron: This has been an interesting, if short, debate, with some thoughtful contributions from both sides of the House. Unfortunately, time does not permit me to give credit where it is due.
	The issue of targets was, understandably, mentioned on a number of occasions. It is our central contention that, despite the best efforts of NHS staff, to whom we are all thankful for all their hard work and achievements, the NHS suffers from too many Government targets and too much red tape, which clogs it up and reduces its effectiveness, distorts clinical priorities and demoralises staff. That is one of the main reasons why there are so many recruitment and retention problems in the NHS, and why after such a massive increase in spending, there has been only a modest increase in activity. Patients are suffering because they are having to wait far longer than necessary to be treated.
	It is worth remembering the scale of the problem. Staff turnover in the NHS runs at about 22 per cent. The national average stands at 16 per cent. In financial terms, the cost to the NHS of about 270,000 people leaving and having to be replaced is about £1.5 billion a year—the cost of 10 new hospitals. A report on the problem published by the Audit Commission back in 2002 cited specific factors such as a lack of professional autonomy, a sense of being undervalued by the Government and bureaucracy as some of the causes of the problem.
	There is no shortage of evidence that the Government's targets are distorting clinical priorities and demoralising staff. Last year, for example, a House of Commons Committee heard from the Bristol eye hospital, where waiting time targets for new out-patient appointments had been achieved at the expense of delaying follow-up appointments, with the result that 25 patients went blind. Many other such examples exist; suffice it to say that a further recent opinion poll of doctors found that 82 per cent. thought that the amount of red tape that they have to comply with prevents them from devoting as much attention to their patients as they would like. Some 95 per cent. said that there were times when the pressure to comply with Government targets distorted clinical priorities and adversely affected patient care.
	The point is that such targets can and do demotivate staff who are already working under tremendous pressure. Dr. Ian Bogle, the outgoing chairman of the British Medical Association, said last year that the Government's obsession with waiting times and performance targets was suffocating professional responsibility, damaging patient care and leading to fiddled figures on how well the NHS was doing. Indeed, he added:
	"We now have a healthcare system driven not by the needs of individual patients but by spreadsheets and tick boxes."
	Even Unison's head of health, Karen Jennings, said:
	"Hospital staff need to be free to concentrate on clinical needs and priorities instead of chasing crude targets."
	It is no wonder that morale among professionals is so low and frustration is so high. Earlier in the year, 500 doctors paid for an advertisement in which they said:
	"We once believed that the NHS was the finest healthcare system in the world. Today, few health care professionals would make that claim."
	In a recent Royal College of Nursing survey, entitled "Stepping Stones", 10,000 nurses were consulted, and one third said that they would quit the profession if they could. Some 11 per cent. said that they planned to quit the profession in the short term. Although the internal rotation shift system helps to meet demanding targets, it is particularly unpopular, and it is no surprise that the number of nurses leaving to work in the USA doubled last year. Nurses' morale has not been helped by the Government's decision to delay the roll-out of "Agenda for Change".
	With morale so low and staff turnover so high, it is not surprising that the NHS has not made the expected progress, bearing in mind the extra money that has been spent. Spending on health has increased by 46 per cent. in real terms since 1997, and no one can deny the Government's good intentions. However, it is a statistical fact that in-patient activity has increased by only 5 per cent. since 1997.
	Government targets have significantly increased time spent on administration and bureaucracy. NHS figures show that the number of managers and senior managers has increased at almost triple the rate of new doctors and nurses. The massive increase in targets and bureaucracy means that a lot of the new money has not reached front-line clinical services. For example, an RCN eve-of-congress poll, which was taken only last month, made the point that most nurses have not seen any evidence of increased staffing at work.

John Hutton: That point is made up.

John Baron: The point is not made up; it is from the RCN eve-of-congress poll.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If Front Benchers want to intervene, I would be grateful if they did so formally rather than chattering from a sedentary position.

John Baron: Department of Health figures show that, although some of the longest waits have been addressed, average waiting times for hospital operations have steadily risen, from 90 to 99 days, over the past four years. Government Front Benchers shake their heads in disagreement, but that fact comes from Department of Health figures and has been admitted by Nigel Crisp, the chief executive of the NHS, and I look forward to the Minister's response on that point.
	Low morale and the recruitment and retention problem mean not only that patients must wait for longer than necessary, but that some patients do not get treatment at all. Let us take chiropody as an example. Recent chiropody statistics show that many hundreds of thousands of mostly elderly people are being denied essential NHS foot care. They show that more than 800,000 new patients are referred for foot care each year, but the NHS only treats around 2.2 million such patients a year. The vast majority of such conditions are not curable, and single episodes of care are in the minority, which means that hundreds of thousands of NHS patients are simply removed from the list without treatment.
	At the end of last year, the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists stated:
	"NHS capacity is shrinking as a largely static NHS chiropody/podiatry workforce is deployed to support an increasingly difficult caseload. Sadly, those with lower priority needs are likely to be 'bumped' out of the system even though their needs are well above simple nail care."
	For many elderly people, good foot care often means the difference between relying on other people and independence. Elderly people should not suffer that lottery, and the Government should act to resolve the crisis.
	It is not only NHS patients who suffer from the Government's recruitment and retention problems. We heard in the debate how many developing countries are losing their much needed medical staff to the NHS, but the Government refuse to implement proper controls to ensure that that does not happen. The problem is particularly important with regard to nurses. Last year, for the first time more than half of new entrants to the nursing work force were from overseas, and many of them were from developing countries.
	A recent Department for International Development report highlighted the fact that one quarter of the total influx of nurses to the UK came from countries on the Department of Health's list of developing countries from which NHS recruitment is prohibited. The Government have repeated their position that recruitment from prohibited developing countries does not take place, because the NHS is recommended to use only those agencies on the approved list that have signed up to the Government's code of practice on ethical recruitment, but that measure is simply not good enough.
	In written answers, the Government have admitted that they cannot give the current figure for agencies that have not signed up to the code, and that they have no mechanisms in place to ensure that their code is being adhered to.
	In short, the Government are all over the shop on the issue. Conservative Front-Bench Members have been pressing them on it for some time. We have called on the Government to ban the NHS from using recruitment agencies that are not on the approved list. That is a relatively simply precaution, and we have tabled early-day motion 457 to that effect. The continual failure to adopt that simple measure suggests to many that the Government are happy to turn a blind eye to sloppy recruitment procedures so as to solve their recruitment and retention problems.
	Recruitment and retention problems reflect the fact that, although some improvements have been made in the NHS—we all welcome them—progress is not what it should be, given the amount of money invested. Why else does the NHS have such a high turnover of staff? That is the fault not of the professionals who work in the NHS but of the Government. They still cannot understand that their approach is fundamentally wrong.
	Politicians must stop interfering. The Government must stop bombarding staff with targets and micro-managing the NHS. The NHS has been a political football for too long. Politicians must learn to trust the medical professionals and allow them to get on with their job. Bureaucracy and targets often come between NHS staff and their patients. Targets simply ensure that the NHS responds to the Government, not patients' needs and care. The time has come to scrap targets and the star rating system and give all hospitals true freedom, so that they are accountable to patients and not bureaucrats.
	Such an approach will usher in an environment in which doctors and nurses, freed from political targets, choose to stay because they enjoy the freedom to deliver a standard of care to patients of which they can be proud. That environment will mean that the NHS, for the first time in a long time, can realise its full potential and become a patient-centred health service. It will reflect the fundamental difference in approach between the Conservative party and the Government, in that we have greater faith in the individual than in the state. I urge hon. Members to support our motion.

Rosie Winterton: I thank the Opposition for initiating today's debate because, once again, it has given the Government and Labour Members the chance to highlight our genuine progress in rescuing and rebuilding our national health service after years of neglect and under-investment by the Conservative party. It also gave my right hon. Friend the Minister the opportunity forensically to expose the threadbare nature of the Opposition's policy.
	The vast increases that we have made in the numbers of dedicated and committed health service workers, who work so hard to provide front-line services to patients, have been crucial to rebuilding the NHS. Patients show much greater appreciation of the work of those staff than Conservative Members, who take every opportunity to snipe, complain and undermine the morale of health service staff.
	Let me provide the facts. There are 19,400 more doctors and 67,500 more nurses working in the NHS than in 1997. An increase of 27 per cent. has occurred in the number of scientific, therapeutic and technical staff since 1997. Medical students have increased by more than 60 per cent. since 1997, and between 1997 and 2003, the number of nurses entering training increased by 53 per cent. The total NHS work force is now at its highest level.
	We fully acknowledge that there are some recruitment problems. We have taken several steps to deal with them, and I shall tackle some of the points that hon. Members raised later. First, let us consider what the Opposition say about bureaucracy, red tape and targets. I want especially to examine the comments of the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron). The number of targets has been slashed. Three years ago, there were 108 targets, now there are 62. That is less than one target for every £1 billion of expenditure in health and social care.

John Baron: The Minister clearly needs to check her figures carefully, because there are at least a couple of hundred targets, as well as a further couple of hundred aims and aspirations. The other point that we are making is that those targets have had a minimal effect despite the increased expenditure, and average waiting times have risen over the last four years. Will she respond to that point?

Rosie Winterton: I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he knows any organisation that will be spending £90 billion a year which does not set objectives and targets. In relation to targets, we make no apology for halving the maximum waiting time from 18 months to nine, or for the fact that 19 out of 20 people are now seen, diagnosed and treated in accident and emergency within four hours.
	We have decentralised power and funding, and more than 80 per cent. of funding is now going directly to primary care trusts. The suggestion by the hon. Member for Billericay that the NHS is awash with managers is complete rubbish. Since 1997, only 13,000 of 224,000 new NHS staff were managers—5 per cent. of the increase. Furthermore, only 40,000 of the 1.3 million employees—less than 3 per cent.—are managers.
	I should now like to deal with some of the points raised by hon. Members. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow)—who, by the way, did not outline a single Liberal Democrat policy—raised the issue of agency staff. That is something that we need to deal with, and we are taking a number of measures to do so. He talked about NHS Professionals, and about the private sector using agency staff, and those are issues that we can look at in relation to the code of practice for using overseas staff. Indeed, we are already doing so.
	The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam also asked about the dental work force review; we shall be publishing that shortly. I have to say to the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) that it was a bit of a cheek for him to talk about training places in dental schools when the Tories closed down two such schools themselves, but I am glad to hear that our money is getting through, and two new dental practitioners are now opening.
	I should like to thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) for his kind comments about my visit to his constituency. I am glad to hear that progress is being made there in regard to dentistry, but I will look into why the report to which he referred has been delayed. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) talked about the need for preventive health measures. He also congratulated the Government on their investment in training and family-friendly policies, and mentioned the time that he had spent working in accident and emergency alongside his daughter. He talked about targets, and when I meet people who work in A and E, they say that the four-hour target has led to different ways of working, to the better patient experience that he mentioned, and to a higher quality of care for patients.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen) eloquently spoke of her own experience of the dark days of the Tory Government, but pointed out that we needed to increase the number of radiologists. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham) spoke eloquently, too, about recruitment and retention, as well as about the need for medical schools, and made a request for a brand new hospital in his constituency.
	The Opposition motion before us today talks about demoralised staff, but what really demoralises staff is being constantly undermined and talked down by Conservative Members. Far from helping to recruit more staff to the NHS, the attitude of the Conservative party acts as a barrier to recruitment. That attitude shaped 18 years of Tory rule, wrecking our health service.
	Amazingly, the Conservative party has learned nothing. The Tories want patients to shop around with their patient passport, which allows only those who can afford to pay to jump the queue. The Tory policy is for longer waits, new charges and choice only for the relatively well-off who can afford to pay thousands for their operations, and no amount of expensive Tory relaunches will hide the reality of their policies. They are not in the interests of patients, and not in the interests of staff. They are more extreme than the policies that brought the NHS to the edge of ruin.
	Labour brought the NHS into being, and Labour is repairing the damage done by the Conservative party. That is why we are investing the largest ever amount of money in the health service. That is why we have increased the number of people working in the NHS by 224,000. We have done that because we care about the NHS. We want to see a health service of which our dedicated and compassionate NHS staff are proud, and a health service that provides high-quality services for all in our society, and not just for a privileged few. The NHS is improving, and we cannot let the Tories wreck it again. That is why I urge the House to reject the motion and vote for the Government amendment.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	The House divided: Ayes 158, Noes 282.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House welcomes the Government's record extra investment in the National Health Service which has resulted in increases of 19,400 more doctors and 67,500 more nurses since 1997; supports the extra investment in training which has increased the intake of medical school students by 61 per cent. and nurse training students by 53 per cent. since 1997; notes that over one million NHS staff will benefit from improved terms and conditions; recognises that the international recruitment of healthcare professionals has already made a significant impact on the delivery of NHS services; notes the Government's commitment to ethical international recruitment, with its robust Code of Practice, the first of its kind in the world, ensuring that NHS organisations do not recruit staff from developing countries without the agreement of their government; and welcomes the sharing and transfer of experience and ideas that international recruitment brings to the health service.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Electoral Commission

Ordered,
	That the Motion in the name of the Leader of the House relating to the Electoral Commission shall be treated as if it related to an instrument subject to the provisions of Standing Order No.118 (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation) in respect of which notice has been given that the instrument be approved.—[Charlotte Atkins.]

WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE

Ordered,
	That—
	(1) the matter of the Draft Transport (Wales) Bill be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for its consideration;
	(2) the Committee shall meet at Westminster on Tuesday 20th July at 25 minutes past Nine o'clock and between Two o'clock and half-past Four o'clock to consider the matter of the Draft Transport (Wales) Bill, under Standing Order No. 107 (Welsh Grand Committee (matters relating exclusively to Wales)).—[Charlotte Atkins.]

NORTHERN IRELAND GRAND COMMITTEE (SITTINGS)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 116(1) (Northern Ireland Grand Committee (sittings)),
	That—
	(1) the draft Budget (No. 2) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 be referred to the Northern Ireland Grand Committee;
	(2) the Committee shall meet at Westminster on Thursday 8th July at half-past Two o'clock; and
	(3) at that sitting—
	(a) the Committee shall consider the instrument referred to it under paragraph (1) above; and
	(b) at the conclusion of those proceedings, a motion for the adjournment of the Committee may be made by a Minister of the Crown, pursuant to paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 116 (Northern Ireland Grand Committee (sittings)).—[Charlotte Atkins.]
	Question agreed to.

PETITION
	 — 
	Mobile Phone Masts

Tony Colman: I wish to present four separate petitions from constituents who live in Southfields and who object to proposals to erect Orange mobile telephone company masts in totally inappropriate locations. I shall not read each petition out, but they all end with the same paragraph. It states:
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge Wandsworth Council to reject these planning applications on design grounds and that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister re-examine planning law in relation to mobile phone masts in urban areas in order to give local authorities more power to reject such proposals in the future.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

NHS SERVICES (EAST SUSSEX)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Vernon Coaker.]

Nigel Waterson: I am delighted to have secured this debate. Almost every week recently there has been bad news in the Eastbourne Herald about our local NHS. Indeed, it has often been the front-page story. The content of my mailbag and the subjects that arise in my advice surgeries, as well as anecdotal evidence, show the extent of the problems. Clearly, certain issues need to be addressed.
	However, at the outset I want to place firmly on record my appreciation of the hard work done by doctors, nurses, administrators and other staff at all levels in my local NHS. I hear from many of my constituents about their experiences in hospital and elsewhere and I see the work of the staff at first hand during my regular visits.
	Recent problems began with the restructuring of services for older people and the closure of All Saints hospital in my constituency. It has been closing for some time—since before I was first elected in 1992. It had some 105 beds at its height and tended to specialise in older patients who had had serious strokes or broken hips or legs. It was clear that the hospital had to close at some stage. It was very old, and unsuitable for the modern age, the fabric was decaying and it was even dangerous. The only issue was what to replace it with. I have made my own position clear from the outset.
	A plan was originally produced in October 2003, but it was decided, in the jargon of the NHS, to "unhook" the closure from the plans to replace All Saints. This beggars belief. In any event, it began to emerge that there was an intention to close All Saints come what may on 31 March this year. That raised some real worries among my constituents, especially the families of patients at All Saints—so much so that the Bishop of Lewes and I took the unprecedented step of calling a joint press conference in the chapel of All Saints to express our deep concerns. It is inexplicable to me even now that it has been so difficult to drag the truth about the plans out of the local NHS organisations. All this has been happening against a background of serious and sustained levels of delayed discharges in our area.
	At this point, the county council's health overview and scrutiny committee under Councillor Bill Bentley became involved and played an important role in the unfolding drama. To cut a long story short, All Saints closed—a little later than 31 March, but it closed. Its replacement provisions contain three main elements. First, there is a new ward at the district general hospital called Hailsham 2, which I visited recently. It is now full, and it provides in-patient treatment for those patients who need acute treatment. It is my impression that it is working well. It is almost entirely staffed by former members of staff of All Saints hospital.
	Secondly, there is Firwood house, a facility that has undergone renovation and is designed for those who are close to going home at the end of their treatment. Yet even now it is not fully operational. Staffing is not up to the levels needed, so not all the beds are being used. We were originally assured that it would be fully operational by 30 April, and that has not happened.
	The third element is community teams—rehab teams and others—looking after people in their own home. But again, the teams have been plagued by staffing problems so we do not have, in the words of the health overview and scrutiny committee, a "seamless provision" to replace All Saints. It remains a disgrace that all this provision was not put in place before All Saints closed. It is dispiriting that there has been so much open in-fighting between different parts of the NHS over this issue. It raises issues about the current structure of the NHS, which is a discussion for another day. It is deeply depressing that it has taken so much pressure to persuade the local NHS organisations of the value and importance of carrying the local community with them both in closing a much-loved local institution and in persuading them of the need for and effectiveness of the new arrangements.
	All this is against a background of major financial problems in the NHS. We have a financial recovery plan. These days, we seem to have one almost every year. We also have a local delivery plan. It is worth spending a little time on the documents. They refer to the deficits that were built up in the previous year—the year that has recently finished—and they look at ways of trying to bring this deficit and the projected deficit in the current year under control. They look at decommissioning and what they call demand management, and they talk about significant bed reductions. The documents also make the point, which will be of interest to the Minister, that in 2001–02 all the organisations in East Sussex were able to balance their books, but in 2002–03 all of them, except the Bexhill and Rother PCT, reported a year-end financial deficit. The organisations have built up between them a deficit of some £26 million across the local health economy.
	Rather dramatically, the documents say:
	"The LHE has to get into recurring balance as a matter of urgency and is wholly committed to doing so."
	I have to ask why there is such urgency. Can the Minister answer that point? Touchingly, the documents say that they have a project implementation weighting that is the product of the ease of implementation, multiplied by the anticipated resistance or "noise". I suppose that I count as part of that noise.
	The organisations need to make a recurring saving of some £10 million. We have already lost 105 beds in All Saints hospital. They are now talking about a medium-term saving of some 200 additional beds, and they are looking to close between one and two wards on each of the two sites, Eastbourne and Hastings, in the current financial year. They also talk about significant savings to be achieved
	"by de-commissioning of services and demand management".
	Amazingly, my local hospital plans to ensure
	"that up to 4,000 new outpatient referrals . . . will not be made"
	in the current financial year. That is a significant number.
	The documents also refer to something that they engagingly call "transformation" which involves "site and speciality rationalisation". That emerges from the previous management merger between the hospitals in my constituency and in Hastings. On the back of that, they have carried out a clinical services review. They make the point—this is my central concern in this debate—that when the review was set up originally
	"its remit did not include working within a reduced resource envelope".
	My reading of that is that clinical decisions and priorities may be decided not by medical criteria, but by the pressures of the budgetary problems that are faced. As I have said, we have a £26 million black hole in our local health economy.
	The county council has been proactive on the issue, and has made the point that it would make more sense to stop fining it for delayed discharges and to invest the money in intermediate care services. It makes this damning indictment:
	"As it stands the shortcomings of the LDP pose a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of the people of East Sussex."
	On top of all those problems, we have seen some recent unhelpful and probably unfounded speculations about the future of the children's ward in my local hospital. I have received assurances from the authorities that the recommendations of the clinical service review are clear: in-patient services for children should continue to be provided on both sites. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to repeat those assurances this evening.
	My own position since the merger has been clear: I can see no case for any major services being moved from one site to the other, especially in light of the poor communications between Eastbourne and Hastings—of course, the Government could choose to do something about that, but that is beyond the scope of this debate—unless a convincing case were to be made on grounds of safety of patients.
	The clinical services review is still under way, but I shall sum up the position. We have massive problems with bed blocking, or delayed discharges. The present figures, from a day or so ago, show that the trust has 964 acute beds, of which nearly 11 per cent. are filled by bed-blocking patients. There is what the local hospital describes as the collective financial problem of nearly £26 million that has to be found from somewhere, yet the hospital and the PCT say that they suffer extra pressure due to the significant elderly population. In our area, we have the country's highest proportion of over-85-year-olds.
	The PCT points out:
	"The actual allocation to Eastbourne Downs is based on historic levels and historic levels of spending with specific increases each year . . . Because the allocation is over target, the year-on-year increase for this year and next is less than the national average."
	There is a squeeze on funding over the current period. The trust also notes that East Sussex
	"has the second worst level of delayed transfers of social and non-social care in the country".
	In the long term, some of the initiatives may be right. Of course, we should avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and that sort of thing where possible, but my overriding concern is that the whole process, including the clinical services review, will be poisoned by budgetary concerns and that it will be driven by financial rather than medical motives.
	In conclusion, I have four questions for the Minister. First, may I have his assurance that he and the strategic health authority will take a close interest in the re- provisioning of services for older people in East Sussex? Secondly, in due course, may we have as a serious option the possibility of a new, state of the art rehabilitation unit on the All Saints site? Thirdly, as there seems to be a recurring black hole in the finances of the local health economy of about £26 million, will he urgently review the formulae applying to East Sussex, with special regard to the high proportion of elderly people in the population? As I said, we have the highest number of over-85-year-olds in the country. Finally, will he ensure that budgetary pressures are not allowed to prejudice patient care or to distort clinical priorities in our area?

Stephen Ladyman: As one always does on these occasions, I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) on securing the debate. I very much appreciate the interest he takes in his local health service. I know that these are matters of great concern to his constituents and, although I did not agree with some of the points he made, I very much appreciate the thoughtful way in which he put his case and the energy that he puts into trying to support his local health service.
	I, too, begin by paying tribute to all the NHS and social care staff working in the hon. Gentleman's local health economy. Their commitment to the continued improvement of his local NHS and social care services is to be commended. I was delighted that he began his speech by congratulating them—something that is all too frequently forgotten.
	The national health service plan sets out a challenging 10-year programme for NHS reform. We must ensure that services are accessible and flexible and designed around the needs of patients locally. That is why it is now for primary care trusts, in partnership with strategic health authorities and other local stakeholders, to determine the best way to use their funds.
	The East Sussex health and social care community faces significant challenges, some of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Some of them are common to communities up and down the country, while some of them are specific to East Sussex; for example, East Sussex has a higher than average proportion of people aged over 60—a point to which the hon. Gentleman referred. In some areas, the number is twice the national average. There is a higher than average demand for primary care services and an increased use of GP services, due in part to the older population, and significant challenges are associated with delayed transfers of care. As the hon. Gentleman said, it would appear that the area is the second worst in the country. However, I must chide him slightly, as he is a member of a party that is committed to repealing the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Act 2003, should it ever come to power. What would that do to help the situation in his constituency?
	Despite those challenges, the NHS continues to achieve the national standards set out in the NHS plan. For example, as at April 2004, no patient in East Sussex was waiting longer than nine months for in-patient treatment, and no patient in East Sussex was waiting longer than 17 weeks for an out-patient appointment.

Charles Hendry: What advice would the Minister give to one of my constituents—an 80-year-old lady—who has finally, after 18 months, had a hearing test? She has now received a letter saying that she is now on the waiting list for a hearing aid. She was told, "We cannot tell you how long your wait will be. Please do not contact us to find out", as that only distracts staff from doing the work that they should be doing. Is that a service of which the Minister is really proud?

Stephen Ladyman: I would certainly not approve of that type of contact with the hon. Gentleman's constituents. We should try harder to aspire to a much higher standard than that, but we have made tremendous efforts to modernise audiology services across the NHS. We have introduced a digital hearing-aid programme that is gradually rolling out, which will be concluded shortly. We are also making great efforts to improve the training and supply of audiologists. I very much hope that no one will suffer from that bad service in years to come. If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me on the specifics of that case, I shall be happy to make inquiries and report back to him.
	We have made some achievements and reached some important milestones. That is good news, but we want to go further. We want to build on those achievements and further reduce the length of time that patients have to wait for treatment and deliver better care services across the board. The health service and local stakeholders in East Sussex share that vision. To make that progress and to live within the resources that it receives, the NHS and all the health and care organisations in East Sussex must look carefully at the way that they work, and that is just what they are doing.
	For example, the mental health trust has consulted on and adopted a new model of mental health service delivery that will improve prevention and provide early intervention and better access for patients. The East Sussex social services department has made radical changes to its structure, service delivery and commissioning arrangements. Eastbourne Downs primary care trust provides a range of services from a purpose-designed facility in Eastbourne that comprises a community stroke team, day hospital, in-patient step-up and step-down services and community rehabilitation.

Norman Baker: Does the Minister accept that the Eastbourne Downs PCT, which serves my constituents in Seaford and Polegate, has a financial problem that prevents it from rolling out services to those communities, as they wish? Given the consequences of the belt-tightening that must be endured, Seaford—a town of more than 20,000 people—is not receiving the health services that it needs.

Stephen Ladyman: I am not aware of the specifics of that issue, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that in general terms, which I shall repeat later in my comments to the hon. Member for Eastbourne who initiated the debate, all health organisations in the NHS must live within their means. If we allowed an organisation to overspend, the consequence would be that we would have to take money away from another organisation and another local community. So we allocate the money as best we can, using as fair a formula as we can devise—we can debate the details of that formula—and then we must leave the PCTs to manage their funds and prioritise local services. I surmise that that is probably what that PCT and both hon. Gentlemen's local health organisations are doing in trying to balance their books.
	Furthermore, partner organisations in East Sussex have developed a county-wide process of service review that is nationally recognised as being at the forefront of public and patient involvement. That clinical services review has considered eight different areas of the health service over the past 18 months. Each of those reviews has involved patients and has been appraised by clinical and patients reference groups. Those groups have made a number of recommendations that are now under discussion in the partner organisations.
	An East Sussex clinical service review of children's services has been undertaken with the full involvement of both clinicians and the public. I understand that the recommendations in the report are based on recommendations by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and that they are currently being considered by the boards of East Sussex hospitals and PCTs. Far from being a matter of concern, the review process will ultimately lead to better care for everyone. Those who have been brave enough to engage in the process should be congratulated.
	The hon. Member for Eastbourne raised issues about potential service changes and sought assurances, particularly on children's services. I assure him that no decisions have been made, but the changes are clearly very important to the development and improvement of local health services in the future. Any major change in service proposed in this area, as in all other areas, would require a full public consultation and ratification by the health overview and scrutiny committee. Anyone who misrepresents the position or engages in scaremongering for political gain—my intelligence from the local area suggests that that is being led by the Liberal Democrats—should be ashamed. Those people are not putting patients first and applying the objectivity that local people deserve.
	The objective of the review is that health and social care services are transformed from high levels of institutionally based provision to a wider range of flexible and integrated services provided by multi-professional people in locally based facilities. That model of care is proven to provide real benefits for patients in terms of health and independence. The local delivery plan describes how the NHS and social care community will deliver the NHS plan over the next three years and it has been agreed by all NHS organisations in the area. In addition, the East Sussex county council cabinet has endorsed the overall direction of travel, which envisages a reduction in the number of avoidable admissions to hospital, shorter lengths of stay in hospital, reduced hospital capacity and reinvestment in community facilities, in particular in intermediate care.
	Underpinning the local delivery plan are 10 key work streams which can roughly be described under three headings: short term, medium term and long term. In the short term, the NHS and its partner organisations need to work together to make the most of the resources that they receive. I understand that work is progressing that will see improvements in procurement, moves toward more shared services, and more efficient use of the NHS estate.
	In the medium term, new patient pathways will be designed. They will increase community services and thus reduce the need for hospital admission. The challenges associated with delayed transfers of care need to be addressed. For example, I understand that last week 10 per cent. of the acute hospital beds in East Sussex were occupied by patients who no longer required hospital treatment. That is not good enough. Although the NHS and the local social care services are working together to address the issues, the hon. Gentleman must direct some of the blame towards the local council, which has a responsibility.
	The NHS and social care community in East Sussex are also refocusing services for older people. That includes developing services that encourage health, prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, minimise in-patient stays and maximise independence. Those services will be person-centred, closer to home, focused on rehabilitation and provided by a combination of professions. The closure of All Saints hospital must be seen in that context. Refocused services that allow the generation of more community and home-based provision are what people want.
	The closure of All Saints hospital is a local issue. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman admits that it was unsuitable for the purpose and needed to be closed. I am aware that it was closed at the end of March as it did not provide safe and appropriate services for elderly patients. The closure released resources that have been and are being reinvested in community-based intermediate care in the Eastbourne Downs PCT area. That strategy is in line with our agenda for social care. In fact, we have announced that we are writing a new vision for adult social care. Three key principles will underpin and drive forward that new vision. They are that services must be person-centred, proactive and seamless. We have not always listened to what people want and need. We have created cultures and structures that have generated dependency. The challenge now is to offer people choice, control and empowerment. We must value their abilities. We must ditch the culture and language of need and dependency, and create services that empower people, which is exactly what the team in East Sussex are trying to achieve.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman expressed concern about the financial position of the East Sussex health economy. The local delivery plan includes a three-year financial recovery plan amounting to £26 million. The health service has received significant additional resources, and annual expenditure must remain within the resources allocated by Parliament—a point that I made to the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). If one part of the health economy is allowed to overspend, another part must pick up the tab, which simply is not fair. Between 2003–04 and 2005–06, the four primary care trusts in East Sussex will receive an increase of £130 million for health care services. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Eastbourne, Eastbourne Downs PCT will receive an increase of £47 million over three years, which represents a cash increase of 29 per cent, so there is no reason why it cannot manage and deliver high-quality care. All NHS organisations must understand that having received their fair share of resources they have a corresponding responsibility to manage them effectively without relying on bail-outs from the centre or from other parts of the NHS. They must manage within allocated resources.
	It is the responsibility of strategic health authorities to deliver overall financial balance for their economies and to ensure that each and every body achieves financial balance. The health community has already made significant efforts to bring the financial position under control, and will continue to do so while ensuring that adequate and safe services are delivered to local people. The hon. Gentleman asked me four questions, the first of which was whether I took a close interest in these matters. My ministerial colleagues and I always take a close interest in such reviews, but under "Shifting the Balance of Power", those matters are to be decided locally. It is no good my colleagues and I thinking that we can run the whole health service from our offices in Whitehall, as we do not have the local knowledge and expertise to do so. We have therefore shifted many of the health service's resources to primary care trusts and local bodies, and we expect local service reviews to address local challenges on the basis of local knowledge and expertise. The hon. Gentleman needs to raise the state-of-the-art rehabilitation unit that he wants with local service commissioners. If they decide that that is the way forward, they would not encounter any argument with us at the centre.
	I have addressed the black hole, as the hon. Gentleman called it, and it is important that local services tackle it. There is consensus about the way forward on managing the budget locally, and I am pleased that agreements have been reached. The hon. Gentleman talked about budget pressures that affect patient services, and it is important that we ensure that that does not happen. I am sure that given the increase—
	The motion having been made after Seven o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
	Adjourned at twenty-seven minutes to Nine o'clock.